[Home-on-the-range] Lawrence Journal-World: Gift Gets Legally Blind Artist to Take Up Brushes Again

Dianne Hemphill diannehemphill at cox.net
Mon Dec 30 15:38:32 UTC 2013


...thanks for  sharing this Susan - I've just recently begun working (playing) with some art forms and have found, to my surprise, how much I enjoy the whole process of thinking about, designing and allowing the creative process to unfold...this guy sounds like someone the NFBK might want to contact - it sounds like his philosophy about losing his sight is already one that parallels with ours. Dianne
On Dec 27, 2013, at 8:16 PM, Susan Tabor wrote:

>  
>  
> LJWorld.com | Gift gets legally blind artist to take up brushes again
>  
> LJWorld.com
>  
> Gift gets legally blind artist to take up brushes again
>  
> December 26, 2013
>  
> John Parkinson is a bit embarrassed with one detail of a painting in the living room of his Hancuff Place apartment.
>  
> “Do you notice anything about that painting? It’s not like those,” he said, waving his hand to two of his paintings hanging on opposite walls of his apartment.
> “There’s no mountain. I forgot to paint it in. I’m going to call the painting ‘Mystery Mountain.’ If people ask where is the mountain, I’ll tell them that’s
> the mystery.”
>  
> The paintings on the wall were done long ago, when the 57-year-old Parkinson painted regularly and before he was considered legally blind. Eight years
> ago, a stroke following quadruple bypass surgery left him with limited sight.
>  
> “If you were to take a pair of glasses, coat the lens with Vaseline and look through them, that’s basically what I can see,” he said. “I’ve got a TV. I
> can’t see much, but I can see the colors.”
>  
> He’s painting again because of the gift of an easel in October from two fellow Hancuff Place residents, Bob Goulet and Mike Moran. The two men had seen
> the paintings in Parkinson’s apartment and wanted to motivate him to take up the brush again.
>  
> “We wanted him to quit watching TV all day,” Moran said. “He used to be a painter. We wanted to get him started again.”
>  
> Parkinson said he had been involved with art since he was a child, growing up in San Diego, Calif. His drawings of World War II aircraft are in the collection
> of the San Diego Air and Space Museum, and he started painting oils in 1977, he said.
>  
> He shared an interest in hobbies with this father, applying his artistic talent to model trains and the radio-controlled airplanes they built, Parkinson
> said.
>  
> About 20 years ago, he built a dollhouse for his daughter, Jenifer. After adding furniture and wallpaper, he noticed one thing was missing.
>  
> “There wasn’t any paintings on the wall,” he said. “So I decided to paint some. It turns out there is the International Guild of Miniature Artisans. I
> joined and started doing miniature paintings. It absolutely took off.”
>  
> He sold 1-inch by 2-inch miniature paintings on eBay, getting a thrill about how the bidding price would skyrocket in the last 30 minutes, Parkinson said.
> His most noteworthy placement was a 2-inch by 4-inch painting of the Titanic in a museum in England.
>  
> He’d thought about starting to paint again in recent years, Parkinson said. When Moran and Goulet gave him the easel, he decided there were no more excuses.
> He enlisted his daughter Jenifer Waters of Baldwin City, the same daughter for whom he had built the dollhouse years ago, to help him shop for art supplies
>  
> “I went down the aisle, saying ‘I need cadmium yellow and yellow ochre.’ She’d hand me brushes, and I’d tell her ‘I need one with stiffer bristles than
> that,’” he said.
>  
> That same retained knowledge allowed him to paint despite his limited vision.
>  
> “I can’t see, but I can see up here,” Parkinson said, tapping his head. “I can do it because I’ve been doing it for 30 years. I know what I’m doing.”
>  
> Waters said Goulet and Moran’s gift has meant more than painting to her father.
>  
> “He’s received a really good reaction,” she said. “It’s definitely lifted his spirits. I think it’s given him more confidence in himself, too.”
>  
> Parkinson said returning to painting reinforced a lesson he learned when, after his stroke, he was placed in a room at a rehabilitation facility with a
> man in his mid-20s with severe cerebral palsy.
>  
> “I realized he had a disability,” he said. “What I have is an inconvenience. I was pretty down after the stroke, but I think that was God’s way of telling
> me to quit feeling sorry for myself and get on with it.”
>  
> Parkinson is ready to move ahead with this painting.
>  
> “My next painting’s going to be of a barn,” he said. “It’s based on one of my miniatures. It’s a big barn. Big enough for farm equipment and everything.”
>  
> Originally published at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/dec/26/gift-gets-legally-blind-artist-take-brushes-again/
>  
>  
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