Cultivating Ways of Seeing
I was Googling "strabismus" the other day and came up with this article, about how the condition (where both eyes cannot work together in stereo, and so compensate using the visual equivalent of context clues to navigate the world) is actually a great boon to visual artists. Why? Because instead of seeing the world primarily in objects, which the brain translates to icons, people with strabismus pay more attention to the actual colors and contours in front of them. But of course this is a trait that can be and is learned by visual artists, over the course of many years. In many ways, we often fall into perceiving circumstances, events, and people around us icons rather than the unique and significant collection of traits that we are actually encountering in a real-life moment. (A closeup of the painting "Spring," by artist Bertha Gutierrez . 2016) "My child is a real tough cookie." (Oh, I hear you on this one.) "This house is always a wre...