Visually impaired painter sheds light on 'invisible disability'

Looking at Pauline Harper's paintings makes it hard to belief she is legally blind.

The Whanganui artist has only 7 per cent vision after being born with visual impairment.

The 55-year-old places two of her paintings on the table. On the left is a painting of what she sees and on the right is a painting she has altered to what she remembers in her dreams.

She said her vision is not impaired in her dreams and that's what she paints.

"Growing up I wished I was fully blind because then people would understand...because I can see a little people don't understand."

Ms Harper sheds light on what she calls the "invisible disability" through her works of art.

In 2009 she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts and opened an art studio in New Plymouth where she taught painting for four years.

"I wasn't just learning to paint, I was learning to see like a normal person and that was exciting."

But earlier this year she moved back to Whanganui and that's when her life began to fall apart.

She said when she moved back disability support service AccessAbility cut her funding and all her support tumbled and she fell into a dark hole.

Ms Harper said her whole life, apart from six years at Homai School for the blind in Auckland, she had been treated unfairly with little support.

One of her projects was a series of paintings each representing a memory from every year of her life.

From growing up in Shannon disowned by her family and bullied for being blind to attempting to take her life more than once, life had been cruel.

"There was no one outside my family who could ensure I was getting the support I needed...it's not an individual person's fault, it's the whole system and something's got to change."

Ms Harper said she plans to take her paintings to Parliament and make them see what her life had been like.

"There seems to be a huge concern for suicide yet the moment you ask for help you're turned away....it took me overdosing for ACC to provide me support and that's not ok."

Funding from AccessAbility was given to Ms Harper only after she made a complaint to the health and disabilities commissioner.

"I've put up with unfair treatment from this unjust system for so many years but enough is enough."