The Senses 3; Vision

The Senses 3; Vision

 

I could start with the words “The eye is the window of the soul” but, for a change, I won’t. But I am fascinated by the visual component of art.

The eye provides a way to look directly at the brain of an individual because it is an extension of the brain to the surface as it were. When a physician or optician looks at the fundus of your eye using an ophthalmoscope, they are looking directly at your brain. Here is the connection between one person and the next. When you look deep into the eyes of another you are looking past the surface at the person to the inside. By contrast, if someone is avoiding you they won’t look into your eyes. The eye is so important showing the inner feelings and those sculptures with flat eyes like many Greek sculptures have lost their expressivity. The eye is also spiritual, it expresses the personality. A picture of an eye isolated as in my image expresses secretiveness.

Quality of vision of course affects the painter – the shimmering effect of Monet’s waterlilies, his broad brush-strokes are thought to be due to the blurry effect caused by his cataracts with yellowing and darkening of the lens. Similarly Degas nudes became blurry as his eyesight deteriorated that the paintings have lost all their detail becoming significantly more abstract as he developed retinal disease, likely macular degeneration.

In this image I have tried to express both the physical and spiritual components of vision using a mélange of colour, texture, and form, in the centre is the eye which reflects the view from my home, and a wedge-tail eagle breaking free from the surface of the cornea