A Year of Making Art, Day 231: Looking at Art with New Eyes

December 6, 2007  Day 231

The second cataract operation was a success!  My left eye doesn't seem quite as good as my right, but the doc says that in time it will be.  I am walking around looking at the world, seeing it through fresh eyes.  The clarity and crispness are astounding.

The down side is that I cannot read at all without magnifying glasses, and the in-between tasks, such as making a drawing, are difficult either way.  Today I exchanged the drugstore reading glasses I bought last week with new ones that are half-glasses so that I an look up over them for distance, but that doesn't really solve the problem.

In any case, I made this morning's drawing mostly wearing no glasses, but put on the magnifiers from time to time when I was doing a close detail.  I can almost see well enough to draw without the glasses, as long as I keep the paper at a far enough distance.  Here is the result:

   Drawing #236  9" x 12"

I will have to put three kinds of eye drops in my eyes for several weeks, and that is harder to do now also because I need to get close to my eye in order to put in the drop, but the closer I get, the worse I can see!  I wonder how anyone puts on eye make-up after cataract surgery.  I haven't used it in a long time, so that won't bother me.

In two weeks I go back for the final vision evaluation, and will ask about prescription possibilities at that time.  I think I will need a progressive sort of lens that moves gradually from reading to clear for distance.  In the meantime, I don't think reading glasses are going to work for drawing or painting. 

This afternoon I stopped in at the State of the Art Gallery, where I am in a juried show this month.  It was fabulous looking at all the art on the walls with my new eyes!

(Note:  There is a gap between the dates I'm writing and posting in order to give me time to get ahead.)