Painting Through Macular Degeneration

An artist in a wheelchair paints a mountain landscape en plein air (in the open air). The pixelation effect, which moves inward from the canvas margins toward the central figure, is represented as a metaphorical artifact of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Depression in patients with AMD is well studied,¹ and one might expect that adaptation to vision loss can be fraught in specifically poignant ways for artists whose creative processes rely on their embodiment in the field and their experiences and perceptions of natural light, which landscape painting en plein air demands.