The Eye Doctor

Tink 12 x 12 oil 2006 LPressman

Chapter 4 24 x 18 2007 LPressman

I have been wearing glasses since I was five. A while ago, I went to the eye doctor. He is an older guy, in his seventies, and he asked me as he was looking at my prescription, "what do you do?" I told him I am a painter. He said: " What do you paint?" I said: "I am an abstract painter."

He said "I can absolutely see why you paint abstractly." He went on to tell me it is related to my eyesight. I have severe astigmatism/near/far and now the bifocal thing ....whatever....it is bad.

Time Piece 30 x30 encaustic 2007 LPressman

It was an Ah ha moment- the idea that the ophthalmologist could understand what I paint through my prescription was something that had never occurred to me. He then preceded to tell me about being at a conference where he and other ophthalmologists visited a museum to look at Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas and others and diagnosed their eye conditions.

Interesting articles on the subject here at the Science Geek Girl blog and here.

I retold this story recently-taking off my glasses. When I put them back on, it occurred to me that my original vision is one of blurred distorted shapes, colors, values, shadows light.......


Time Travel 38 x 41 encaustic L Pressman



and the correction by my glasses creates a focused magnified view.

Another ah ha moment!

I flip back and forth between the two when making art- Welcome to my Macro/ Micro world!


The Microscope 16 x16 encaustic 2007



Linking 3 24 x 24 encaustic 2009 LPressman