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Some thoughts about "The Portrait of an Artist"

TilMat74's picture

After reading the title of the piece I did not know what to expect. Even when I was halfway through the reading I kept thinking that the writer was describing her father and explaining their relationship as a build up to describing a portrait I thought she had made of him. However, the writer opted to use her writing skills instead of her drawing ones, which I found to be an amazing idea. I think that by making a written portrait of her father she was trying to make a point about how even blind or visually impaired people can appreciate and understand visual art, the same way that the reader can get a really good idea of what her father was like through her writing. She may also be trying to argue that our mind will always interfere with what we see, hear or read. She does acknowledge that words are never adequate but she has also proven that sight can also be subjective and fool us more often than we think, thus prompting us to think about whether we can ever truly capture the full meaning of art through either words or sight.