Visually impaired learn lesson from Art class

Timmy Smith has never seen the ocean.

He does not know what water looks like or how drifting clouds brighten a sunset.
Smith has been blind since birth.

But he painted a picture on Monday with a blue ocean and a colorful sky. Art teacher Kim Cowger helped him.

“Timmy, are you ready for this today?” Cowger asked. “We’re going to the beach.”

She taped a paintbrush to his canvas, at the horizon line, so Smith could distinguish between his sky and his sea. She dipped his paintbrush in deep blue paint and placed it in his hand.

He had already finished the sky. He painted ocean with sweeping strokes, side to side. He kept his left hand on the paintbrush taped to the canvas.

Once a week, Cowger works with students at the Vision Resource Center in the Lions Club building off Rowan Street. All of them are blind or nearly blind. Most of them are seniors. Some, like Smith, are younger but disabled.

For three years, the Seniors Call to Action Team has offered the classes, said Bob White, president of the nonprofit group. They allow disabled people to get out in the community, to meet other people and to learn something new.

Together, they create works of art, respectable paintings that seeing folks would never know were painted by those who cannot see.

A grant from the Arts Council of Fayetteville/ Cumberland County, combined with matching funds from the action team, have supported the program for the last three years, White said.

Two similar classes are offered for Hispanic people who speak little English and for poor minority seniors, White said.

On Monday, John Denver Christmas songs sang out from the boom box as the artists worked on their paintings. A slight smell of oil paint lingered. They sat in folding metal chairs around a long table.

They all painted the same scene, but each work was unique. Cowger helped here and there, filling in bare spots in her students’ seas.

Frances Cooper dabbed blue paint onto her canvas. She could not see her pink and purple sky or the perfect clouds. She can distinguish light from dark, she said, but she can no longer see colors.
Cooper, who worked for years as an accountant, is losing her sight to macular degeneration. “I’m thankful,” Cooper said. “The Lord has left me enough to be able to get around.”

Art is new to Cooper. “I don’t know much about art. This is my first experience. We’re at the beach today. Last week we were at the mountains.”

Frank Dallas, a retired Army lieutenant colonel stood before his easel, looking intently at his canvas. His hands shook, a symptom of Parkinson’s disease. He gripped the easel with his left hand. With his right, he dabbed yellow paint where his sky was appearing.

When his eyes were good and his hands less shaky, he used to be a woodcarver, Dallas said. He whittled all sorts of songbirds and beautiful crosses. He painted in oils, too, and taught Cowger when she was just starting out.

Cowger teaches at Fayetteville Technical Community College and at Michael’s Arts & Crafts stores. She teaches an oil painting technique called wet on wet that was popularized by Bob Ross, the artist who is the star of the show the “Joy of Painting” on public television.

Before they painted on blue, each student brushed white paint onto the canvas first, part of the technique.

Levon Harris is another student in Cowger’s class.

“Levon, you know where your paintbrush is,” Cowger asked him. “Take that brush and scrub it in hard. All right, Levon, go down. Let me pick up some more paint for you. Don’t forget the right side of your canvas.”

Harris said he remembers what sky and sea look like. He can imagine. But when he could see, he “couldn’t draw a straight line.”

Cooper said something about sand. She thought there would be sand. Cowger said no, just pretty water.

Still water? Cooper wanted to know. Calm water?

“Well, honey, we’re going to put some waves in there.”

Cooper called across the table to Smith. “Ok, Timmy, how much are you going to charge for yours?”

He just laughed.

Bob White said the Seniors Call to Action Team has received another grant for $2,400 that will take the art program into another year. They want to expand the program and eventually turn it over to the Vision Resource Center. He said the action team depends on community support to provide the matching money that is required to receive the grant money from the Arts Council.