For some of us art is innate. We have the ability to take a blank canvas, use our imagination, and make something come alive on it. But many more of us don’t have that ability. We may have tried once or twice but find the creative process difficult and give up. Now imagine creating something partially blind.
So, how can you create a painting when you can’t really see what you’re doing?
Cheryl Cassman is a painter at Blurred Lines Art Studio. She said she chose that name because she is legally blind. Cassman has optic-nerve degeneration and the optic-nerves in our eyes are what help us see. Most of Cassman’s optic-nerves are dead and the rest are weakened.
“My vision is very limited,” she says. “So if you see me from across the street and you wave at me, I’m probably not going to react because I won’t see you.”
Even though Cassman is legally blind, it hasn’t stopped her from painting. Instead of relying on sight when she paints, Cassman says she does it from within.
“I don’t see detail, I’ve never seen detail,” she says. “Because I don’t know what I’m not seeing, I don’t know what I’m missing.”
The name Blurred Lines also reflects the art she creates. Detail is left out, so it’s up to the viewers’ imagination to fill it in. Cassman says her art is “more abstract.”
Even though she has always enjoyed art, Cassman turning her art from a hobby to having a full on studio is more recent.
“You know as a kid, I really enjoyed water color painting,” she says. “But then I didn’t really do anything with that until much later in life. I guess I started painting about 15 years ago, and about five years ago I decided that hey, I really wanna get serious about this and it’s now my main focus.”
Cassman describes one of the pieces she is working on.
“Well it’s a kinda of stormy, a storm is probably brewing. The sky, lots of grey and white clouds. You’re just looking at a big tree where the branches are just kinda spread out.”
Think of a bare tree in the middle of an overcast winter day. As for her favorite paint?
“It’s acrylic, I always use acrylic. I think I’m too impatient to work with oil paint because I like quick results and the acrylics tend to dry much quicker. Lately I’ve been painting with a lot of metallic paints. I really enjoy the way in which they behave, and the end result, I mean they’re just so pretty.”
Cassman says those who visit her studio on the Studio Crawl will get to see her demonstrate how she creates one of paintings. But she also says people will have the opportunity to get involved, including making alcohol ink art on tile.
“I just simply drop, drops of the alcohol ink on the tile,” she says. “You just put very little actually and it reacts.”
It’s like tie-dye on tile.
For Cheryl Cassman, painting is less about what she can see but more what she feels. Those who visit her studio will have an opportunity use their imagination as they view her abstract paintings.
This story has been part of a preview for the 2016 Studio Crawl put on by the Fargo-Moorhead Visual Artists. Cheryl Cassman and other artists will open their studios to the public on October 1st and 2nd to showcase their art and how they create it.