CLARA Ryder is making a name for herself as one of the most talented equestrian and wildlife artists in Ireland today, and some readers may even have visited her stand this year at the Dublin Horse Show.

What they may not know is that this rare young talent is legally blind. Despite having no formal training, Ryder has produced a range of stunning drawings and paintings of horses, farm and wild animals and even life studies. Consequently what you see in her work is the skill of somebody with a true gift, a natural artist. Her ambition to study veterinary medicine and work with horses has been denied to her. But as she says, ‘If I can’t work with horses, I can paint them’, so her art has kept her close to horses.

Having her own horse, Oreo, during Covid meant that she could still enjoy riding around County Wicklow. Blind people are known to have excellent memories, being very detailed and are very adaptive, innovative, resourceful, creative and possess an incredible view of the world that only they can see.

Clara also has a love of music and has taught herself the piano, allowing her to play the songs of her favourite artists like Queen, Mary Black and Sinead O’Connor who she also has sketched. She has pursued her love of music further as a member of The Visionaries Choir, and she has performed at Arklow Music Festival. She jokingly added that there are as many guide dogs in the choir as members.

Clara Ryder's painting of an otter

Diagnosis

Although it was evident Clara had a serious vision problem since birth, it wasn’t medically diagnosed until she was three years old. It transpired that she has a rare condition known as Achromatopsia, an inherited retinal disease causing extreme light sensitivity known also as dry blindness.

The human retina has two types of photo receptors to gather light, called rods and cones. While rods are responsible for vision at low light levels, cones are responsible for vision at higher light levels. Unfortunately, Clara has no receptor cones. So in daylight Clara is completely blind while indoors in a dark room she has limited vision but only in shades of grey and black although she needs to be literally inches away from her subject matter.

But on medical advice she can only work for reduced hours as she suffers from visual fatigue. From an early age Clara has been sketching animals with graphite pencils and charcoal encouraged by her teacher in St Columcille’s Community School in Knocklyon who recognised Clara’s natural talent for art.

Clara Ryder's painting of a Connemara Pony

Studio Collection

Her love of animals, especially horses is evident in her work and it is just remarkable how she achieves such definition given the challenges she constantly faces. She has in the last few years build up a collection of original paintings in acrylic, limited edition prints, post cards and bookmarks. These range from horses, Connemara Ponies, a remarkable study of a horse’s eye with a reflection inset, as well as farm animals like cows and pigs and wildlife such as elephants, rhinos, monkeys, hares, otters, badgers and a wonderful study of foxes.

She has also produced a remarkable life drawing of a female torso in graphite, so she has continued to challenge herself.

Dublin Horse Show

Clara’s first exhibited in her college on an animal welfare theme. But this year she booked an exhibition stand at the RDS during Dublin Horse Show week, which was a great success. There she offered her complete studio range.

She made many contacts during the week and sold enough to clear the costs of the stand. She paints mainly in acrylics on canvass and explained that, for example, the image of the fox is painted on Arches Cold Pressed 100% Cotton Watercolour Paper using Daniel Smith Watercolour Paints.

From her original paintings she also offers limited edition prints of horses, farm animals and wildlife in Archival Pigment Prints on 310 gram Hahnemuhle German etching paper. In addition the purchaser also receives a certificate denoting their particular number in the limited print run. She has already decided to exhibit again next year at the Dublin Horse Show which will please her many fans.

Blind artist Clara Ryder and her dog Blue \ Noel Mullins

Guide Dog

Clara’s five-year-old guide dog Blue is a black Labrador who never leaves her side, and I was pleasantly surprised with the way Clara and her dog interacted so naturally with my neighbour Marie Byrne’s horses when we met. Clara describes Blue as her eyes, an extension of herself, her independence, the emotional support of a companion and her best friend who allows her to be inside society rather than be on the periphery.

It was amazing to see that when Blue was not wearing his harness he is just like any other dog, but when the harness was put on he was immediately on duty, looking up at Clara for the next instruction and ignoring everyone else. One could get a sense of the enormous amount of training that a suitable guide dog has to go through and not all dogs are deemed suitable. The Irish Guide Dogs are almost totally dependent on donations of up to €5 million a year to keep blind people supplied, with estimates of €50,000 as the cost of training each dog. Clara says Blue also keeps her toes warm when she is working in her studio.

Adding Colour

On her website Clara has a quotation by Jonathon Swift that runs as follows, ‘Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others’, and how true that statement is in her case. The challenge of adding colour has not daunted her, as like every challenge in her life she has devised ways around them. So she has been adding colour to her work of late through a system of values and shades which she has devised. Even though she is producing works in colour, she has to trust her judgment as she herself cannot see colour as her limited vision indoors is only in shades of grey and black.

Solo Exhibition

At the moment Clara is building up a large collection for a solo exhibition, as well as working on landscapes and a very large canvass some 40 inches x 50 inches of an equestrian theme. Because of its size and the fact that she can only get a sense of an image when she is literally one inch away, she is tackling it in sections to allow her to overcome the challenge of proportion.

Expect to see much more of this exceptionally talented artist in the future.

Clara’s work can be seen and ordered from her website clararyderart.com with 10% of sales profits going to the Irish Guide Dogs.