Puzzle Pieces
Samantha Leftwich
“Puzzle Pieces” - shows a large canvas which is made up of sections of multiple different images of Lizzie which I have pieces together like a puzzle to make an image of Lizzie’s face and part of her chest. You can see a very small pieces of background, including grass, grey sky, blackish green cover and water. Lizzie is a pale yellow Labrador with slightly darker ears, big dark brownish black eyes and a very pale pink nose. She has her collar on with her Guide Dog ID tag visible. Her face is focused towards the left of the canvas, her right ear is fully visible but her left ear is only partially visible. You can see the front and right side of her mouth and jowls. Her pink nose is at the front middle of the canvas and is quite large. This image means so much to me. It’s a compilation of a number of photos taken on some of our holidays and days out we’ve had together. Lizzie has perfected her ‘boop’ pose very well so her nose being at the forefront of the canvas is very representative of our usual photos. The puzzle style canvas represents how I have to piece everything together. I have glasses which allows me to read some large print but the field of vision is very small due to the level of magnification. Zooming in on images I can only see very small pieces of images. I also have lots of voids in my vision due to scarring so when I’m looking at things I cannot see the view as a whole and have to take time to move my eyes to try to see the bits that are in the voids. My brain then takes everything I have seen and pieces them together like a puzzle. I often find that my puzzles are missing pieces so I often have to fill in the bits that are missing. This has certainly made my life much more interesting as I often find i have a very overactive imagination filling in the gaps with things that aren’t actually there. Lizzie means a great deal to me. She has given me so much in the time we’ve been working together and I’m so glad I’ve been able to represent how much she means to me.
(Image shows me wearing jeans and a striped t shirt, standing in front of a Boulder with my guide dog Liz who is sitting in harness with a seascape at Lands End in Cornwall behind us.)