Berkshire Vision member Emma Major tells us about her sight loss and how it has led her into the wonderful world of art.
Emma lost her sight seven years ago, she has no vision in her left eye and blurry vision in her right eye. Her sight loss happened very suddenly and it took three years of tests and investigations to discover that it was caused by FND.
FND or Functional Neurological Disorder is a medical condition in which there is a problem with the functioning of the nervous system and how the brain and body sends and/or receives signals. FND has not only affected her sight but also her mobility and so she now uses a wheelchair. Prior to her sight loss Emma did have previous issues with the sight in her left eye, but by the time she got to see someone about it the problem had resolved itself. It is thought this was all related to FND and this time her body was not able to recover from the sight loss issues.
Emma really struggled to come to terms with her sight loss and need to use a wheelchair, but counselling through Talking Therapies helped her massively. As part of her recovery she decided to set herself a goal of doing something that others might think was impossible for a blind person to do. She decided that this was art!
Emma tried creating mosaics first, and with the help of her assistant she managed to do it. She had a brilliant time, getting to meet lots of great people at the same time. Emma was hooked!
She tried knitting, crochet, needlework, sculpting, and painting with colours on big sheets of white paper and loved it all.
It was during lockdown that Emma decided to try sketching. Rather than use technology to magnify things as she had been doing previously with her art, she decided to sketch what she could actually see. It was this sketch that would open many doors for Emma and send her on new artistic adventures.
Emma sent her sketch to Grayson Perry’s Art Club on Channel 4, it was
featured on the show and Emma was interviewed about her art. Grayson inspired Emma and encouraged her to try anything and everything. In Summer 2020 he visited her in her garden for some filming; at one point Emma said “I just enjoy messing around creatively” to which Grayson responded “you are an artist”. That has stayed with Emma.
Emma carried on experimenting with her art, but in November 2020 she got Covid and this left her with very little energy for art, so she thought she would try some digital art on her iPad. Doing art on her iPad enabled her to magnify everything and work without losing detail. She found it amazing and started to regularly post her artwork on her Instagram account (@emmuk74) She encourages everyone to give it a try, they will be surprised how easy it is.
Her new found love of digital art led Emma to get involved in the Wokingham Arts trail in September this year. She opened her studio in her garage up to the public and ran digital art sessions for visually impaired people who wanted to give it a try. She was also recently invited to exhibit at the “Farewell to the Gas tower exhibition” in Reading. Her digital painting is the tower as she remembers it. She hasn’t stopped there, she has three poetry books coming out, has painted as part of the Cemetery Junction arch open day and had a series of artworks and poetry on display at COP 26 The UN climate change conference.
Emma encourages everybody to have a go at art, and we will be running some digital art sessions with Emma in the new year. You can view Emma’s work here
www.LLMCalling.com
