David Kontra: Blind Missouri Artist
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| By the Sea 2013 acrylic on canvas |
A new exhibition is now on display across from US Bank in the MU Student Center featuring the vivid and expressive paintings of David Kontra. Originally from Ohio, Kontra lives and works in rural south-central Missouri in the small town of
Norwood. Kontra is legally blind. He was diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye
disease called retinitis pigmentosa when he was still a child and began drawing
as a way to cope with depression. Retinitis pigmentosa is a condition that
gradually causes people to lose their sight. Suffers must contend with severe
tunnel vision, nystagmus (involuntary rapid eye movements), blind spots, and
the eventuality of going completely blind. Today, Kontra retains less than five
percent of his vision in his left eye, and his right eye can only perceive
changes in light. The artist describes it as, “like looking through a straw
with my left eye only.” As a result, the artist is unable to view his paintings
in their entirety and he must therefore rely upon his memory in the creation of
his works.
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| Image from "Kontra Vision" by Bob McEowen |
When he paints, he wears a special high magnification lens to
enhance the vision of his left eye, and as he works with his face merely inches
from the canvas he memorizes every brush stroke, creating a mental map of the composition.
Due to the limitations of his condition, the artist sometimes takes months to
complete a painting depending upon the intricacies of the subject he is
depicting. Kontra utilized this intensive process in By the Sea to render a dream-like landscape where civilization and
nature converge in a riot of color.
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| By the Sea, detail |
Lacking any formal artistic training, David Kontra is an
outsider artist who only began painting in 2001. Because of his expressive use
of color, abstracted forms, and gestural brushstrokes, Kontra’s paintings are
often compared to works by the German Expressionists of the early
twentieth-century, such as Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde.
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| Rainfall 2013 acrylic on canvas |
In Rainfall Kontra creates a dynamic composition
that showcases the gestural quality of his brushstrokes. The white paint,
representing rain, rhythmically dances across the vibrant abstracted landscape
that depicts a pond and a house in the distance. In addition, the rhythmic
quality of his brushstrokes produces an aural effect that evokes the sound of
rain.
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| Rainfall, detail |
Kontra often paints as a means of releasing his frustration with politics
and the world around him, especially ignorance and discrimination towards
people with disabilities. Kontra, who is himself legally blind, is an advocate
for inclusivity and accessibility of the arts for people with visual
impairments.
If
society is to advance into the future bringing true equality, it must finally
acknowledge the disabled. For the disabled are really not as such. They
are the ‘Able.’ Even though they may not see, hear, speak, or move as well,
they can certainly think and function whilst social barriers are
placed before them. The disabled must surmount complex challenges
regarding transportation, mobility, education, employment opportunities,
poverty, ridicule, depression and ostracization, which proves that the disabled
are not second class citizens but first class survivors. Because they
must endure these obstructions that an arrogant, apathetic society allows,
their dynamism confirms that they are the proper proprietors of social
egalitarianism.
– David Kontra
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If you're interested in purchasing your very own original David Kontra painting, check out the Saatchi Online Gallery.
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