Renewal and Possibility
As we consider this upcoming year, we turn to the inspiring words and works of artists who have adapted to vision loss.
Read MoreArticles, films, oral histories, publications, and exhibitions featuring artists with vision loss due to macular degeneration.
Artists
Explore this ongoing register of artists with macular degeneration
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Film
Serge Hollerbach
Watch Our Newest Film: “Serge Hollerbach: A Russian Painter in New York”
Our award-winning documentary is now available to stream.
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Robert Birmelin: Weaving a World of Reality and Dream
Due to vision loss, Robert Birmelin has stopped painting and uses drawing these days to explore his unique vision of the world.
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Agnès Varda
Faces Places and Agnès Varda’s Radical Generosity
On Faces Places' 5th anniversary, a look at how Varda allowed her vision loss to shape the film and make it great.
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The Vision and Art Project3 weeks ago
We're starting the year by continuing to highlight the inspiring words and images of artists who have adapted to vision loss. Today, we'd like to bring attention to Robert Hamilton (1917-2004).
In Hamilton's own words: “Generally speaking, macular degeneration is an old age disease—the eyes are wearing out. I can see all around, but I can’t see in the middle. It’s a blur in the middle. If you fall off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. That’s my new motto.”
Hamilton’s improvisational approach to painting served him well in the last years of his life, when he had no vision in one eye and blurred central vision in the other. He abandoned large canvases and worked instead on 16 x 16 and 24 x 24 inch squares, creating paintings that were more mysterious and chromatic than ever.
The painting below, “Same Old Dream (Self Portrait)” is one of Hamilton's last works. As a young man, he'd served as a fighter pilot in WWII, and in this painting he returned to the P-47 imagery that haunts many drawings and paintings he did throughout his life.
In Hamilton's own words: “Generally speaking, macular degeneration is an old age disease—the eyes are wearing out. I can see all around, but I can’t see in the middle. It’s a blur in the middle. If you fall off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. That’s my new motto.”
Hamilton’s improvisational approach to painting served him well in the last years of his life, when he had no vision in one eye and blurred central vision in the other. He abandoned large canvases and worked instead on 16 x 16 and 24 x 24 inch squares, creating paintings that were more mysterious and chromatic than ever.
The painting below, “Same Old Dream (Self Portrait)” is one of Hamilton's last works. As a young man, he'd served as a fighter pilot in WWII, and in this painting he returned to the P-47 imagery that haunts many drawings and paintings he did throughout his life.