Saturday, August 18, 2007

Vision-Fractured Flashing Crystals

Fractured Flashing Crystals
8" x 12"
watercolors
Soft afternoon sun filtered through the lace curtains in my narrow bathroom window and washed the wall beside the window and part of the shower door with pale yellow. A thick purple towel hung on the shower door and a pink net "poof" hung inside the shower. This room, with its slanted roof and wallpaper with purple flowers, was a cozy place-a refuge that somehow reminded me of the bathroom that had been added onto my grandmother's house before I was born.
Over the years, I have spent a lot of time, just looking out the bathroom window in many places I have lived. Sometimes, I just watched the clouds, or wondered what was happening just over the hill, watched animals outside, or the changing seasons.
I don't look out this window very often, though. The window has frosted glass, and it is fairly small, and it has the lace curtain covering it. I have other spaces in the house, now, with better windows to look out of.
This particular afternoon in March, however, as I walked into the bathroom, I saw a curving line that resembled the outside edge of my eyelids around my eye that has wet Macular Degeneration. But, instead of a distinct line, this line was made up of parts of the shower, broken up into bits and pieces of glass or crystals. I called it fractured, flashing images inside crystal or glass shapes. The light and images were not steady, but, instead, seemed to flash or have changing light as opposed to a steady image.
I blinked, I closed my eyes, I rubbed my eyes, but the image remained as long as I looked in the direction of the shower. I went into the bedroom and put a cool washcloth over my eyes. The image disappeared when I left the bathroom.
More abstract art for me to paint. But this was too real. I would prefer to make up something, or to paint or draw more freely, rather than trying to portray what I was seeing as abstract art.

3 comments:

masterymistery said...

love your work. sorry about the macular degeneration.


portal to the multiverse
wicked and sick
manic memes
pathetic poetry
mumbo jumbo
very short stories

Cecelia said...

Thank you. I'm glad you are enjoying my work. I hoped that, by posting my art work and experiences with AMD, someone else might be helped when they encounter it. And, others might just enjoy the "art show" that I'm seeing. I've had trouble posting the past few days, but I think that is worked out now, so look for more new things to come.

tassy said...

I have experienced the same phenomena several times.
The broken image ) I cannot determine what it is exactly perhaps a photomontage of torn photographs comes nearest) dances about in the bottom cormer of my left eye.It doesn't change as I look at a different view.I can "see" it even when I close my eyes!!
It is not a refraction in the spectacles as it is still there when I take them off.
I have a minor dry macular degeneration in my right eye and I have experienced this in it once but about five times in my left eye over a period of 2 years.Trips to the eye specialists cannot determine anything "wrong" on the left eye.I look forward to seeing your and other's comments