Biddy’s story

The present direction of my work may be affected by glaucoma, but I still relish the excitement of trying to explore new territory.

The disease was spotted by an optician, who was obviously looking out for signs of it. I was worried when I was diagnosed, but at that stage, my vision was still pretty good. I had memories of my father’s partial sight loss. Though he had to give up driving in his early 70s, he was still able to read and he wrote an account of his early life for his grandchildren.

During the past 20 years, my treatment at Moorfields has included eye drops, a trabeculectomy, laser and a Xen gel stent.

For the first few years after diagnosis, I experienced no problems with my eyesight, but since then my vision has become increasingly patchy. If I look through binoculars, my blind spots appear as large grey areas, but normally these gaps are filled in by my brain, so I don’t notice the missing parts. But the brain is only able to provide what it expects to find, so I miss unpredictable hazards like holes in the pavement or steps in unexpected places. When out, I have to remember to walk slowly and not look up at my surroundings, otherwise I’m liable to fall over. I usually cling to my husband’s arm if we’re out together, as he walks quite fast! I’m also very bad at finding things that I’ve misplaced.

I studied Fine Art and later Art History, which I went on to teach at university level. After retiring from teaching in 2004, I returned to full-time painting, which makes me particularly reliant on my eyesight. In their book ‘The Artist’s Eyes: Vision and the History of Art’ (2009), which talks about the role of vision and eye disease in art, authors Michael F. Marmor and James G. Ravin discuss glaucoma. They claim that wide-angle glaucoma is unlikely to affect a painter’s work until near-blindness is reached because different parts of a composition can be examined in sequence, one after the other. To me, this seems a little over-simplified and takes away the human element in how painters work. I feel that it downplays the role of the artist’s mind when developing ideas for a new piece. Intangible things like memory and emotion are as important as the physical world.

Above are two of my paintings. ‘Landscape in France’ dates from a year or two before my glaucoma diagnosis. It was painted outdoors and explores distance. ‘Disquiet’, painted a few years post-diagnosis, is a studio work, and shows objects on a flat surface (as shown by the cast shadows). This change in style happened at the same time as my shift from ‘holiday painter’ to full-time artist. By 2006, I was becoming fascinated by the ways in which Surrealist artists explored their hidden thoughts and impulses through their art. I also became less interested in imitating the 3D world as we see it, and more concerned with exploring the 2D flatness of the picture surface and using recognisable objects to make patterns and express feeling.

I now wonder if this shift in approach was partly an unconscious response to the changes in my vision caused by glaucoma, even though I barely noticed these changes at the time. These days I find looking at landscapes quite hard work. When my visual fields were undamaged, I could enjoy a panoramic landscape and almost simultaneously focus on individual details. Now, I have to visually explore a scene bit by bit, which feels disjointed. I find examining separate objects in relative close-up much easier. My vision loss is mainly in the upper part of my visual field, which may explain why I now often place the things that I paint on the floor.

Although most of my recent paintings represent collections of objects, I don’t think of them as ‘still lifes’, but rather as visual metaphors. Many of the things I paint are old, discarded and rusty. My paintings can be interpreted as a rejection of consumerism or as a recognition that everything in the world starts new and then decays. In recent years, many of my paintings have reflected anxieties about political and environmental developments, and COVID-19.

While painting ‘Abandoned’ (above), I was thinking about the plight of refugees. The inverted chair and detached shadow in ‘Miasma’ came about in response to the pandemic. I still have only a partial understanding of the process of coming up with ideas for paintings and am particularly happy if I manage to make an image that surprises me. Nearly 60 years ago, one of my tutors said that artists need to break free from ready-made rules and conventions in their work, and should aim to travel to places that are beyond what already exists. This challenge is what I most enjoy about painting. The present direction of my work may be affected by glaucoma, but I still relish the excitement of trying to explore new territory.