This oil painting of “Nia” is a milestone for me in several ways. Nia is a white tiger that lives at PrideRock Wildlife Refuge along with her two sisters, Nikki and Nallah. Nikki and Nallah are typical orange colored tigers although they possess the genes of a white tiger. Just before four o’clock this morning, I finished another oil painting which was of Nikki. I think our middle daughter, Bonnie, has “first dibs” on this painting. Perhaps, you will see it someday in another email message from me.

Earlier this year when I started doing oil paintings, our youngest daughter, Suzanne, emailed me that she wanted an oil painting of a tiger. So this painting of Nia was hers from the get-go. I delivered it to her home last Friday and left it wrapped as her birthday present at her back door.

These two oil paintings of Nia and Nikki are by far the best paintings that I have done since I started in September of 2006 on my attempt to be an artist again. They were possible for me to do only because I spent several years doing only pen and ink drawings of the lions, cougars and tigers at PrideRock and then spent several years doing watercolors learning to add color to my drawing abilities.

I am very thankful that I have lived long enough to be able to paint these two paintings.

For, today is somewhat of a special day in my life, since it is the last day in my life to experience sight and vision with my natural eyes that I have used for the last 76 years.

Tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM, I am going to lie down on a surgical operating room table, open my eyes and let a young Chinese lady named Judy, that I have only talked to twice in my life and she looks young enough to be my granddaughter, stick a little ultrasound instrument into the pupil of my right eye. With this little instrument she will break up the lens and then suck it out. At that moment I will be blind in my right eye. For me to hopefully see again, she will insert an artificial lens into my eye through the little hole that she made to remove my natural lens. I have a lot riding on the skills and the steady hand of this young woman.

If all goes well and I can see with my right eye after the Thanksgiving holidays, she will do the same thing to my left eye in early December.

So, for the next several months, I expect there will not be much, if any, painting activity by me. To say that I hope all goes as planned, would be somewhat of an understatement.

Assuming that both operations go well and I will be able to see again with the new artificial lens in my eyes, it should be interesting to see the changes, if any, in my paintings.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

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