Remarks by Patrick McGowan
Good Morning Everyone. My being here today was the outcome of a serendipitous occurrence in my eye doctor’s office, who on learning I was an artist asked me if I would mind telling my story on having Macular Degeneration. I am an artist… a sculptor to be exact. Sculpture has been my life, my passion from the time I left the crib. My career as a sculptor has had its ups and downs, but the experience of touching people through my works with sadness, gladness and laughter has brought its own rewards. At 79, my fervor for sculpting continues to swell; it is for me a way of life. Getting the word that I had Macular Degeneration and would be losing my eyesight. Well, It was my own 9-11.
Several years ago, I walked into my living room to watch evening television and noticed my vision was suddenly blurred and the center of what I was viewing looked as though it was smeared like what is done on TV to hide a person’s face and/or undesirable area. Several days later, I was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration in my left eye. I had little knowledge of macular degeneration and it’s consequences. When the retinologist described the condition and it’s devastating potential gone untreated, I was painfully stricken. As an artist whose life was through my eyes, it was crippling news on both a spiritual, emotional and physical level. I was temporarily down, but not out.
All too often, we blame God directly for the misfortunes that befall us. My way of looking at my having MD, cancer and other maladies is in the belief that God created all things with an end. He also created all things with their own unique nature or modus operand. Spiritually, I had no problem in that I didn’t strike out at my maker. What had happened to me was the result of my body acting out its nature and how I used or misused its assets over the years. I have never believed God singles out any mortal with the intent of doing them harm or in punishment. Everything has an established nature from its creation and it is in acting out that nature in conjunction with or in opposition to other natures that we have juxtapositions or collisions, so to speak.
My emotional recovery though was a matter of accepting the situation, which came without too much difficulty. My philosophy is that survivors of life look at disasters as a challenge and find ways to beat them. You push yourself back up, dust off your knees and take the first step. Good can be found in every bad event and that good always renders us stronger than before. My right eye was unaffected and I found the peripheral vision in the left eye was still useable. So, I had a way through this. Many years ago, midway in my career, I asked myself what I would do were I to lose my sight. To answer that question, I began practicing my sculpting blind folded. With a highly developed sense of touch, I found I could do a masterful portrait by feeling the contours of the subject and comparing them to the clay model. It would not be as exacting nor would it have the detail as would be with normal vision, but the portrait I modeled took on a character that was unique, unlike any I had ever done before. It was more sensitive. I have since seen works done by those who are blind and have found in those works the same uniqueness, the same sensitivity to the subject being rendered. So, I was encouraged knowing I had this option to work with as well.
In relating the physical aspects of my situation, I need to explain some basic theories about what I see and how I see as an artist. Without light… there is no dimension. Sight is the embodiment of light into shapes and forms. It is digitized, so to speak, and sent on to the brain for interpretation. Following that interpretation, we get a print out of a recognizable image. We get a picture. Everything we see is an aggregate of shapes and forms defined by light or the lack thereof. In the true sense of the term, we don’t see detail, we see impressions. This is a fact brought to the fore by early painters who used dots, lines and posterizing in composing their paintings of everything from landscapes to portraits. This theory was primary in my coping with MD. I found methods to contrast one shape or contour against another. I increased studio lighting and donned a head mounted magnifying apparatus to further enhance my impaired vision. One such piece done under these circumstances is the sculpture, “Surf’s up” which was at the height of my eye problem.
Having worked out all that had befallen me and settled once again in my work, I was told my right eye turned from dry to wet MD. Both eyes were in trouble. Now that news was a little more difficult to swallow. I felt suspended over a bottomless pit. The condition was in its early stages and had not yet affected the macula, it just laid off to the side in a threatening manner. If I closed my left eye and looked at a white wall, I could see the black spots in the lower portion of my view. Dealing with this new development was primarily a reenactment of my past ordeal with the left eye. However, this time, the prospects were a bit more threatening and it took a little longer to recover.
As if this were not enough, about a month ago, the retina in my left eye became detached. This same eye also has a cataract. Through surgery, the retina was repaired and I can still see color and large shapes relatively well.
The medical field has done miraculous things in changing the course of our body’s nature. Public awareness of MD has been brought to the fore and the research for solutions has been aggressive. Then, there’s Dr. Stoltz of Georgia Retina who has shown me meticulous care and compassion using the latest in technology. Nature besets us with trials that are the consequence of other natures interacting with our own. We have no control over these events leaving us with little choice but to accept them. We do have the choice though to innovate, to change, to reconstruct and make a new way. Modeling a sculpture takes longer, but changing my style of modeling makes it easier. Increased lighting and magnification have also helped me surmount my malady.
Giving up is not a solution it only makes the matter worse. Oh, I feel pangs of despair at times, but they are only temporary as I reason that there is excitement in the challenge to overcome my enemy. I have this need to win and win, I will.
www.sculpturebypatrickmcgowan.com
Sculpture... it adds another dimension to artCreativity is the embodiment of a vision, emotion, or thought.
