Vision issues no barrier to student’s artistic focus

Adam Lister is blind in one eye and longsighted in the other, but he’s not letting that block his artistic dreams.

The NMIT student’s works will be part of an exhibition with his bachelor of visual arts and media year two classmates from May 17.

Lister’s eyesight impairment means he has no perception of depth.

‘‘I can’t judge how far away things are, and that also means I have a lot of trouble estimating the dimension of certain objects,’’ he said.

‘‘I’m also slightly colour blind and can’t see the difference between shades of red; to me they all look the same.’’

But it hasn’t deterred the 32-year-old from pursuing his passion.

He had always liked art from high school, and when he turned 30 he decided to take the NMIT course.

The three-year bachelor degree involves a lot of research and reading, something Lister finds more difficult than his fellow students.

‘‘Everything we make has to have theory and research behind it, and that can be quite challenging,’’ he said. ‘‘Since my eyesight is not very good, I listen to a lot of podcasts on the topics. I’ve found that’s been quite helpful.’’

He said he tried to imagine his artwork before he started working on it. ‘‘Because I can’t see very close up, I often miss very small, finer details, and that’s probably one of the biggest challenges.’’

For the nature and landscape-themed exhibition at Momentum Gallery, called Leaf, Lister has painted a Central Otago landscape as well as a photograph from the Cobb Valley.

Seven second-year students, including another who has a visual impairment, will be showing their works alongside Nelson photographer Craig Potton.

Student Miya Austin-Dobie said they chose Potton to collaborate with on the exhibition because he’s ‘‘really friendly and community-based’’ and his landscape work suited the theme.

‘‘And having a professional exhibiting alongside us is a good look, I guess,’’ she laughed.

She said the youngest student was 19 and the oldest 32.

‘‘We’re all in an experimental stage of our degree, still trying to find our style and everything.’’

Austin-Dobie said they wanted to give back to the community, and therefore were donating 10 per cent of the sales of artworks as well as the gold coin entry fee to the Blind Foundation.

They chose the charity because of the two students in their group who had a visual impairment.