George RedHawk is an artist based in France who has been legally blind for 12 years. RedHawk began to lose his vision while he was working in medicine, which included being a radiology technician.
As his vision deteriorated, RedHawk was forced to give up his career. He suffered from visual distortions created by his mind trying to fill the gaps in his vision. To express what he was experiencing, he turned to computer animation to create “The World Through my Eyes”, a series of GIFs created from artwork that already existed.
“My motivation and goal was to present art that is well known, but to present it from a different perspective – a distorted version of the world as I see it through my corrupted vision," RedHawk tells BuzzFeed. "[My] world isn't a static photo, it is in constant motion, and the confusion I experience with a constant flow of faulty data was best represented as 'motion art'."
The artist says this style of animation is now being called "The RedHawk Effect".
"My artwork does not show exactly what I see, it expresses the distraction, the confusion to the sense of 'order'," says RedHawk. "It represents the disturbance, and it shows some of the beauty around us, even when the world is viewed through my eyes."
"To express my work, morphing software seemed the logical choice so I began using this software to layer one image onto another. This was a good way to express the morphing and transitioning of my vision as my mind attempts to discern what I am seeing.
"One day I tried an experiment: 'What if I morph a photo to the exact same photo?' What I found is that I could get some pretty amazing movements."
"The true challenge for me is trying to replicate and express what I feel as I struggle to find my way through my remaining vision. I am never quite certain that what I am seeing is what the sighted world is seeing, but I was truly amazed to get such positive response from many in the blind/visually impaired community who tell me that it is very representative of what they also experience."
"As my condition is progressive, I have only one future and as it occurred with my previous career, the time will come where I can do this no longer.
"There is hope, however, with new [medical] technology, [which I hope] will permit me to continue making my motion art."
