12.04
A SHORTS STORY.
I have a heightened sense of “pareidolia” – the psychological illusion of seeing shapes in random forms (eg. seeing faces and other recognisable objects in clouds). This is due to optic nerve damage on both my eyes about 6 years ago. Essentially, I am a “Visually Impaired Artist,” with about 10% vision remaining overall. However, my two eyes differ – the right eye has no central vision, and totally veiled periphery. The left eye has a small central crescent-shaped “hole” that I see my world through – while the left eye periphery is also badly veiled. Basically, I have a sort of tunnel vision, but with lots of “noise” also obscuring my view. Despite this, I love my vision. Precious as. But quite often I mistake objects as other things, and see faces where they don’t exist.
“Kabuki Warrior” is a result of this phenomenon (pareidolia). Today after visiting the CBD, I roughly folded my shorts and placed them on my unmade bed. I glanced down moments later and thought I saw a face in the folds of the shorts. Yes, there it was. There HE was, invading my bedroom. I tweaked it only slightly – made the eyes a tad more open – then took this photo. As usual, no Photoshop, which I avoid like the plague, unless for a technical reason such as hiding the identity of a photo subject. Glad I had my red sheets on the bed today, and glad I hadn’t made my bed. How sloppy of me. Nice bit of colour.