"you say blind like its a bad thing,...""yes maybe i do!"

Blondish painter,..
OK amusing to me and my peers others are saying" that's so disrespectful!" or the usual " but you can see SOMETHING can't you"

i live in a visually impaired middle ground, grey zone, understanding purgatory if you will.Since i have some vision but lost  enough i am given the title "legally blind". now follow me here there are many titles they throw at us middle-grounders(like that one) so gotta keep up with me.Legally blind meaning by legal standards i have lots enough vision to either need glasses to function within society's  i.e. driving, boundaries or that Ive lost enough to no longer be able to function within them. Like driving, cant do it ,..legally. I'm sure if you ask a room full of us middle grounders at least a small handful have secretly driven a boyfriend or girl friends car at some point. Being legally blind some can still get glasses and function, i cant.

Visually Impaired. See now this is a broader PC term covering anyone with an impairment from total blindness  or having only one eye, or significant loss.But hearing it it really seem to apply more to the first, to those who have lost total eye function .i fit into this title as well. my visual impairment is from a degenerative eye disease called startgardts macular degeneration/dystrophy. since birth i have slowly lost central vision, depth perception, good chuck of color and grown to have horrible light sensitivity.there is still vision i have peripheral lol i don't think it works well but still i have something.

So those are the two basic title of the middle grounders. Now i have deemed us the mg"s because of one plain fact,... no one gets us. It would be much easier to explain if you had no vision, or one eye was bad or something but people don't get it especially if you cant wear glasses."but cant you see?""can you see me" "how many fingers am i holding up" just a word to the wise,.. that last one is the most ignorant thing no matter if you laughing to say to anyone with a visual disability,..just saying.

So the argument to all this is simply ,.. blindish. I am centrally blind, peripherally blindish, mostly color blind depth blind,.. so I'm blindish.

But i can see.

its just not what you see, to me Ive grown to think everything i see and the way i see it is normal.
this is how i think most in my same position feel. so to use all these names to explain all these titles are really for you, you who are sighted because we feel like we are  normal, we have vision we aren't blind we are just seeing a different perspective that you all miss. having too much or all vision may in fact distract some some amazingly beautiful things in this world

" we exist in beauty but choose to ignore it"

what ever title you deem upon me as fitting it is all a matter of perspective.which is why i choose to change my art style years back. i realized after a horrible experimental trial  i participated in that all my art was made like i "could see everything, trying to compensate and look like other artists. I hated every last piece. I made a conscious decision to paint the way in which i saw everything somethings exaggerated but from my visual perspective, light and shadow, with out depth no more faking to try to paint like i saw what i couldn't just plain me.It was liberating! Its become my goal to reach out with understanding from that point on.

the pinnacle of what i strive for was about 2 years ago,..my first show at the black box diamond. i came in to speak to the owner and a Young boy with a can in one hand and his mother in the other came through the door. The mother very sweetly and politely asked if these were Rachel Dora Ann's paintings. The owner said yes. She smiled and whispered to her son. He smiled so big, then his mother asked if he could walk around to"see"them."of course", he told her. they walked slowly starting from the door, he got within inches of each canvas taking it all in.then he lifted his hand and turned as if waiting to see if it was OK, the owner nodded. The boy touched the pieces and viewed the way i had always wanted them to be seen. before they left she turned sweetly, tearfully"thank you", and left. When i was in school they said all id ever be was a telemarketer, or work in a office for those with disabilities, .. no one ever said i could be an artist or anything i wanted to be.i cried because somewhere i hope in my art he saw that he has more out there for him then sitting squinting in a fluorescent lighted office til he grows old or making phone calls to be who don't need it.I really hope i gave him the hope to follow whatever path he chooses.

i hope i showed him he isn't blind,.. just blind-ish

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