The Blind Woman Who Helped Me to See

On a recent visit to my hometown, NYC, I attended the usual figure drawing sessions at the Art Students' League. After class, evening time, I rested for a while on a bench in the lobby. Soon after, a blind woman - Asian, with orange-dyed hair, walked in, poked around with her walking cane, then sat down on the bench diagonally across from me. The first thing I thought was why would she dye her hair if she couldn't see it? Maybe she once could see and knows what orange looks like? And what is she doing here if she isn't taking classes?

There are, actually, art classes for blind people at other schools, with the students using their hands to feel things out, but I asked the employees and they said she just came to sit there, on a regular basis, always around the same time. It actually made them uncomfortable. I thought, maybe she was an artist previously, then somehow became blind and was nostalgic for art school. Or maybe she just needed a place to rest from the hectic city streets. Or maybe she came to teach us something.

It then dawned on me, suddenly, that INNER SIGHT is what an artist really needs to express. There is a tendency towards an over-emphasis on the external appearance of things. Literal, physical sight can be deceptive, illusory, tainted by all sorts of biases and preconceptions. If one is stripped of physical sight, as in blindness, one is forced to exercise the vision of the soul.
Throughout history, there have been many tales of the blind prophet or seer who was able to see things other people couldn't (or chose not to see). Maybe I just happened to see one of them, of all places, at the Art Students' League.

It was quite a sight. :-D