Thuline's artists eyes - the importance of vision

One of artist Thuline’s famous cow paintings

It’s been an interesting(weared) week for us.It made us realise that eyes are so important. How difficult it is to live without sight. My husband, who is an artist himself, (you can see some of his work on my website) has had an operation on both eyes. The retina came away. So for the next few weeks he is as good as blind. His sight is slowly starting to come back. Things have to be very organised at home. Silly things like leaving microwave doors open just can’t happen. Everything has to be put in the right place.

As John Lennon said it himself in ‘Tell me what you see.’ With his birthday quite recently, I suppose it was fitting that we had to go to Liverpool for Dave’s operations. We’ve always been a great fan of the NHS but we were very happy with the treatment that he received there. And even with the Corana problems there, it felt like a safe environment.

Lots of artists have songs about the eyes/sight. Johnny Nash who very recently died wrote: ‘I can see clearly now’.

When talking about my art, I always mention the importance of the eyes. When I start a new painting I choose a background colour first. And then I paint the eyes. It helps to find the character of the animal. It’s almost as if I am talking to him/her while I am painting.

But even when everybody is wearing masks, you can still see twinkles in the eyes that tell us a lot of how they are feeling.

I get a lot of very lovely people coming to the gallery. One that stood out was a lovely blind man looking for WH Smiths. He was looking very closely at the paintings so he could make some shapes out. He bought a keyring with a ginger cat for his wife. After a long chat I walked him across the road to have a drink in Brown Sugar.

And then I had a little bit of good news a few days ago. I have been granted indefinite leave to stay in the UK. Living here for 25 years, I didn’t think there would be a problem. I’ve always paid my taxes and national insurance, I have my 2 lovely boys and my business… but it is nice to see it on paper.

Thuline