Heartsong Studio

 

Is there a problem that is limiting you in some area of art ?  Maybe you or a friend need strong glasses to see distant things.

Or maybe you’re partly colour blind. Have you ever thought that a special gift can also have its limiting side too ?

Here’s an article that will open your eyes to the flip side of handicaps.

“Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth”

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Nearly everyone has one or another cross to bear. There are usually at least a few obvious solutions to most problems.

If your focus is on your problem, it tends to loom larger, and eventually you become a victim of your own making. But if you can get the knack of focusing on being open to possible solutions, then those possibilities will multiply.

It’s a case of seeing the gifts within your limitations. Here’s an example of someone who discovered a unique skill in his handicap.

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Monty Roberts is a man whose pain and limitations still echo in his mission to leave this world a better place for horses. He was raised by a violently cruel father, who was also a foremost breaker of wild horses.

When Monty was a young boy, he spent long periods scouting out good mustangs — wild horses — to drive back for his father to break, and sell.

He hated the cruelty of this work. He was also born almost totally colour blind. Colour blind people have a few visual abilities which “normally” sighted people lack. They can see detail at vast distances. And they can perceive movement too because the colour isn’t a distracting factor from the value (dark and light).

So he observed herds of wild mustangs from 2 to 3 miles off, without disturbing them. This way he was able to observe firsthand their body language. Then he experimented using the same “language”.

Eventually he was able to “gentle” a mustang within about 7 minutes, without cruelty, or breaking. It took his father several days to break a horse the traditional way.

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I know two colour blind artists. They have both worked with animals, as it happens. One works in graphite and charcoal, introducing a little colour. The other is a metal sculptor. Both have sensitive perception of values, which far exceeds mine.

I know my acute sensitivity to colour can be a blessing but also a handicap. My sense of light and dark values are not as well developed, so depth in a painting takes special effort for me to achieve. Though I’m quite at ease feeling the different emotions of colours, getting into the very dark is rather daunting.

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It was a traditional method of painting for an artist to first paint the whole canvas in varying shades of grey - black and white. This was to set the values from the outset. Then they applied local colour in the appropriate value.

You should try it sometime. It’s quite difficult to switch back and forth, especially for someone with an acute sense of colour. But you can learn to see light and dark values with this kind of patient practice. For a partially colour blind artist, it would be easy.

During World War II, the air force were always looking for colour blind gunners. They could be flown over an area of dense growth, for instance, and clearly see the camouflage draped tanks. A normally sighted person’s eyes would be fooled by the camouflage. But not the vision of a colour blind person.

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With a little imagination, you can see how a so-called handicap could be an advantage. And a so-called special gift can have its limitation side too. It all depends on what you make of your “givens”.

How can you make fuller use and appreciation of those gifts that have been given to you ?

You might start with a closer look at what you haven’t developed very well.

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Besides handicaps and their advantages for artists, there are other types of handicaps too. Some of them are hugely affecting for the life of that person. Nonetheless, if you were born with a handicap, and received all the latest treatment available, you would still have to live with yourself as well as you could.

Persons who are blind frequently develop a keener sense of hearing and / or touch. Deaf people often develop acute visual discrimination. There are a few, rare examples of people like Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind. But rather than holding her back, these huge handicaps urged her on into becoming an inspiration to millions.

I recommend reading “Animals in Translation”, by Temple Grandin, for an amazing story of how one woman turned her autism into rare skills which are widely sought. There is so much to learn from this person both about how animals and autistic people communicate, but also, how “normal” people perceive and communicate too.

For artists interested in visual language, it is a wealth of fascination to learn how visually- thinking animals and autistic people perceive the world.

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Don’t settle for simply surviving your handicaps and limitations, or staying blind to the flip side of your gifts.

Any real limitations can be used as a catapult to launch you on your way to thriving in an even more fulfilling life.

If you have any experience with overcoming and thriving because of a handicap, I would love to hear your story.

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If a friend sent you this article, you may not know about my free newsletter “Fresh Horses”.

When you sign up to receive Fresh Horses, you also receive the bonus of my free guidebook  “How you can draw by learning to see”. Please go to http://www.heartsongstudio.com   to see if this would be of interest to you.