Evolver 148

21 Angela Charles is a painter. As we talked we both remembered when I wrote about her work in 2005 and she mentioned her favourite red pencil. All that remained was a tiny stub but it still delivered a magical thin red line. Angela can’t see that red line any more. A gradual change in her sight ten years ago accelerated and she went from being that carefree person navigating the stones on Chesil beach, painting sea and landscape, to someone who only has very limited peripheral vision. She still spends time on the beach, a sandy one, but now accompanied by her beloved guide dog Flynn. She has changed from a non-dog person to sharing every moment of her life with one, and that is the least of the adjustments she has had to make. There is a signi fi cant pause in our conversation when she describes the moment when she was given her diagnosis and was told that she would go blind and that there was no treatment. For a visual artist it was catastrophic. She relinquished her job as a curator and people assumed that she would also give up painting. She didn’t! Her palette became brighter and the mark- making bolder. She had a ‘muscle memory’ of how to mix colours and has assistive technology to help. And if all else fails she can ask a human! When people commented on the change in her work she sidestepped the reasons. It was a long time before she felt comfortable telling people, and the galleries that showed her work, that she was losing her sight. She supplemented acrylics with the thick pens beloved of graf fi ti artists which hold so much liquid paint it feels like painting. Some of her compositions changed to re fl ect the change in her vision. She tends to place larger areas of colour centrally, with more detailed mark-making located at the edges where scribbled lines are visible to her limited peripheral vision. Art has always been Angela’s life. She studied Fine Art Textiles at Goldsmiths and colour was always her passion. She felt that that de fi ned her. Now she feels more de fi ned by her blindness than she does by her practice as an artist. However she recently rediscovered her love of screen-printing. The back-lit screens allowed her to see the strong monochrome marks. “It made me excited to see lines and marks that I thought were lost to me forever.” Collaboration has become another way of working. Sculptor Lawrence Dicks, who carves stone, made some pieces for her Gilbert and George at the Hayward Gallery and the Ashmolean’s recent Radiohead show. She still remembers what Radiohead record covers looked like and the excellent audio guide supplemented her memories. She relies heavily on AI powered smart glasses to tell her what she is looking at. They are much better than headphones, which are disorientating because they remove her ability to navigate a space by sound, exacerbating her lack of sight. In new work Angela is moving away from “memory of place, more towards memory of experiences, I am starting to look at disability art, which I see as a positive move, going forward.” Fiona Robinson Angela Charles ‘357 DAYS AGO’ (Acrylic and paint marker on aluminium panel, 70 x 70 cm) based on classical sculpture. She found the process of drawing on the uneven surfaces challenging, feeling that she was almost ‘destroying’ his work. In another collaboration with Björk Haraldsdóttir, a ceramicist, the fl at sides of Bjork’s vessels were easier to decorate, and the resulting marks seemed to reference landscapes. Visits to exhibitions continue to be important but instead of low-lit historical works she gravitates towards shows like the Follow evolvermagazine on Instagram ‘LAST CHANCE TO SEE’ 5 March - 29 April : Mowlem Theatre, Shore Road, SWANAGE, BH19 1DD. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 11am - 1.30pm, Monday - Saturday 6 - 9.30pm. 01929 422239 / themowlem.com . 4 March: Film screening and talk, 6.30pm. Portrait photograph by David Blackwell