Memory and Novelty Converge for Blind Artist Manuela Solano

9 hours ago7 min read

Manuela Solano’s journey is a profound exploration of how perception is rebuilt, not lost, when one sense fades. After losing her sight, the artist didn't abandon her craft; she transformed it, developing a new tactile process that challenges our very understanding of memory and creativity.'I’ve heard that memories change every time we revisit them,' she reflects, a statement that resonates far beyond the studio. This isn't just an artist's musing; it's a universal human dilemma.Everyone faces the problem of remembering, the slow, imperceptible erosion and re-sculpting of our past with each recollection. For Solano, this theoretical concept became a practical methodology.Her work now operates in the space between the tangible and the remembered, her hands mapping contours that her eyes once recorded, creating portraits that are as much about the fluidity of internal recollection as they are about external likeness. This process is less about replicating a visual reality and more about documenting the emotional and sensory echo of a person, a conversation, a moment in time.It brings to mind the psychological studies on memory reconsolidation, where each time we access a memory, it becomes malleable before being stored again, subtly altered by our present state of mind. Solano’s art makes this invisible, neurological process visible.She is, in essence, painting with the very substance of memory itself, her canvases becoming archives not of fixed images, but of evolving personal histories. Her story compels us to reconsider the hierarchy of the senses in artistic creation and asks a deeply human question: is a portrait more 'true' when it captures a single, frozen moment, or when it embodies the living, changing relationship between the artist, the subject, and the passage of time? In a world obsessed with high-resolution fidelity, Solano’s work champions a different kind of clarity—one born from introspection, resilience, and the courageous act of redefining one's entire creative language.

#featured

#Manuela Solano

#painting

#blindness

#memory

#art process

#visual arts

#portrait

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