by Patricia Price
We were saddened to learn in late February 2000 of the sudden death of long-time ACBI member and friend Mary Solbrig. Perhaps the best way to honor her is to tell her story one final time.
Challenge characterized much of Mary Solbrig’s life. Though recognized as an award-winning painter, she achieved the honors despite severe vision impairment. In fact, she often commented that as her sight worsened, her paintings got better.
In early childhood, Solbrig, of South Bend, IN, was stricken with polio. However, she overcame most of the disability and eventually went to the Patricia Stevens Finishing School to learn how to walk more gracefully. Later she became a professional model, and after that, she began a career in the travel industry. As she traveled around the globe seeing beautiful scenery, visiting galleries, and meeting people, Solbrig often wished she could paint a picture of the things she saw.
After her retirement from the travel industry, she joined the faculty of the Michiana College of Commerce where she worked part-time as a travel career instructor and also taught a grooming class. When her husband retired, Mary did also. Her life became quiet and her need for challenges increased.
In 1978 she enrolled in a watercolor class at the South Bend Art Center and in a class at the YWCA. Misfortune struck in October when her left eye hemorrhaged. The specialist decided to photocoagulate it to stop the bleeding, and hemorrhagic glaucoma resulted. The retina was fragile, detachment occurred and she became blind in that eye. Later it became necessary to remove her eye.
In July of 1979 she enrolled in an art class at Indiana University-South Bend, hoping she could regain some depth perception that would enable her to drive her car again. After a semester of drawing, Mary was able to drive. Her teacher, Professor Droege, quietly and patiently encouraged her to become a serious artist.
Unfortunately, two years later, the good right eye deteriorated. There was now a fine pigmentary mottling in various places and central vision had diminished. Glare was a severe problem, but fortunately form and color remained. As Mary looked around, things were out of focus and distorted. Doorways had strange lines; glare obliterated objects completely; and there was a constant movement and quivering like a bed of worms, or the ground when a mole crawls through. The yellow line on the highway moved up and down like a snake crawling. Windows changed from convex to concave. Houses and high buildings became crooked or wavy.
Mary was now legally blind, yet a training course helped restore her confidence and opened new doors like the Sister Kenny Foundation, the National Exhibit by Blind Artists, and Art of the Eye.
Mary enjoyed painting in most media. Acrylic and watercolor/gouache were her favorites. She liked pastels, charcoal and colored pencils, monoprints and oil, but the chemicals caused her eye pain and headaches. So she limited her use of these media to the outdoors exclusively. With her distorted vision, she learned it was better to be free and loose. She liked to layer colors and use quick-drying acrylic, which gave her that freedom. Her paintings breathed and moved, and she liked to strike deep into the viewer’s thoughts.
Mary began creating her works with photographs of subject matter she wanted to paint. Often she would cut these to pieces and rearrange them to form a composition. Composition was key to her success, which found her works consistently winning awards in competitions with sighted artists.
Mary valued her “mottler” vision and found mystery in the impressions of its faultiness. Working on three or four paintings at once, she went from one to the other applying color to heighten value to fit her style. Ophthalmologists and others wondered how, with faulty sight, Mary could give her impression of that sight. Skill at careful reinterpretation was her talent, combined with a dogged perseverance to engage in the repeated and meaningful activity of painting.
Mary demonstrated her remarkable skill at reinterpreting the effects of her vision loss. Like the late works of Georgia O’Keeffe, who also developed macular degeneration, Mary enlarged her flowers to imbue them with a sense of supremacy and magic, placing their subject matter solidly before the viewer’s eye.
It is interesting to note that most people with macular degeneration do not report a black spot in their central field the way an ophthalmologist might suspect. This is because the missing space is filled with light and projected images that combine to form a visual continuity of field. Mary was aware of this vacancy, as are others with retinal problems who are missing key areas. These were not absent, black voids of non-response on the part of the retina. These became elaborate paintings of the mind’s making.
At night when her eyes were closed, she tuned into a world of art where her thoughts automatically became finished paintings. She saw shapes and shadows through her mind’s eye, and watched the colors blend and change. For instance, a tree changed from greens to pinks, to reds or yellows as the light hit her retina and the subject, and she could see it sway in the breeze. Images changed and moved like a kaleidoscope and to her it was better than counting sheep.
Although the painter is no longer with us, her paintings currently hang in a number of public places throughout the United States. Many of her works have been winners of numerous coveted awards, and have been included in such prestigious exhibits as Art of the Eye I and II, the Glaucoma Research Foundation exhibit in San Francisco, Scott-Foresman/Harper-Collins Publishers Exhibit in Illinois, American Folk Art and Craft Show, Very Special Arts Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Art Beyond Sight, National Exhibit by Blind Artists in Queens, N.Y.
As would be expected, Mary Solbrig was frequently called upon to lecture, conduct workshops, and present solo exhibits of her paintings. This helped her to transcend the disappointment she experienced from the misunderstanding that often greeted her in public places as an elderly woman with a cane. She knew she was not alone. Often the talents, experiences and wisdom of elderly Americans are shadowed and silenced by afflictions of aging. Mary countered this trend with a determination not to fall behind these things but rather to do what she could to get ahead of them. And she was most successful in doing just that.