EXPRESSIONS

I was diagnosed as legally blind at 5 years old. The thing that people who have good eyesight forget is that others don’t. I didn’t see people’s faces much growing up, except for on TV (when I sat so close to it I got in everyone else’s way). My vision was so bad that I didn’t look at you when you talked to me. Instead, I turned an ear towards you so I could hear you better, but it looked like I was aloof and turning away.

When I finally got glasses (and actually would wear them), I loved looking at people’s faces. And I loved seeing all the range of emotions that I felt projected from them. I realized that my own face rarely projected much information. I wasn’t used to expressing myself like that. I hadn’t mirrored much.

When I figured out that people thought I ignored them or didn't like them because of what my face was doing, I realized I was pretty far behind in the whole thing and needed to catch up. I practiced smiling. I watched movies carefully and sort of pieced together my outside self from all the parts of the people I liked. And from how people treated me. I think it was this process that informed how I draw people’s faces and their expressions.

I did not think much of my work when I first started in 2015. I thought of it as a journey. And although I had a lot of drive, I had no real expectations that anything much would come of it. I just followed the drive. But I kept hearing the same comment from everyone: they loved the way I captured emotion - particularly the eyes. I still hear it today. I am flattered, and I have no idea what I am doing that makes that happen. I just know when a drawing is expressing the range of emotions I want to express and when it is “done”.

Here are some drawings that, to me, convey the feelings I meant to express. Some are current work and others are pieces from a while ago that maybe aren’t the most technically brilliant, but that I think deserve a look.