By Jere Hough Meteorologist / Feature Reporter
Published: Mon, February 26, 2007 - 6:02 am
Last Updated: Wed, August 29, 2007 - 3:41 pm
Last Updated: Wed, August 29, 2007 - 3:41 pm
Jere Hough
An artist's striking paintings...plants and creatures that he remembers from his growing up on the Eastern Shore. There's a reason he paints them from memory...Ricky Trione can't see them any more.
In 1993, as a Captain in the Army, he was driving near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Trione continues the story. "A logging truck came by and slung an object through the open window of my vehicle and it hit me in my left eye and it damaged the retina."
Totally blind in his left eye, and then, seven years later...the unthinkable happened. On a Baldwin County road, Trione's car broke down. "I was getting ready to lift the hood up on my vehicle and an eighteen-wheeler came by and blew a tire as it was driving by me and it slung a tire tread off and it hit me in my good eye, my right eye. And that resulted in blindness and also seizure...seizures."
Eventually, the recurring seizures forced him to retire from his after-military counseling career. How does one recover from such life changing losses-
Trione says, "I had wonderful friends and family support, church family that gathered around me."
Today, he is an artist whose work is so popular, he has a waiting list. He is also an artist with a very special friend.
Nancy Raia loans him her sight and her sense of color.
She speaks to Trione, "I'm thinking, we could go white or we could go yellow."
His art begins with his ability to draw what he used to see. "I just like to work real fast. And I just have a feel for the shapes of shrimp because I used to hold shrImp a lot, and catch shrimp, and peel them, and can remembrer what they feel like."
What they feel like...The paint from the squeeze bottles dries to a bead...so that he can now FEEL what he's drawn.
He's ready to paint. Raia sets out paints on a round "easel," actually a styrofoam plate. She directs him to the colors. "At 3 o'clock you have orange, six oclock you have yellow..."
The middle, white, is the "belly button"!
She continues to direct the artist. "Okay...let's go to 12 o'clock and I would like you to go around the inside of the upper crab shell about three-fourths of the way."
She talks him through the entire painting...suggesting color and where to put it...with his fingers, to feel where it goes.
Raia explains, This is something we've been doing this for some tme now. It's a system we developed and hope to do this for the students at the school for the deaf and blind."
The two even let me try to paint a fish, drawn earlier by Trione. My own eyes shut tight. Not great art...but a great learning experience.
{JERE HOUGH} "How lucky am I- A lesson in art. A lesson in courage. On County Road 5 in Fairhope, I'm Jere Hough, News 5."
(TAG) TRIONE HAS BEEN CHOSEN AS THIS YEAR'S LOCAL EARTH DAY ARTIST. YOU'LL SE HIS POSTERS UP BEFORE THE APRIL 21ST EVENT AT THE 5 RIVERS DELTA CENTER ON THE CAUSEWAY BETWEEN MOBILE AND BALDWIN COUNTIES.
TRIONE AND RAIA CALL THEIR WORK THE BLB PRODUCTION: "THE BLOND LEADING THE BLIND." THEY CLEARLY HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.
Enlarge Video 
Download Video
Video RSS
News Map
Email to a Friend 
Printer Friendly 
Recently Commented On