In the year 1995, An American artist based in the United Kingdom, William Utermohlen was clinically diagnosed (gps tracker demente) to have Alzheimer’s disease. This news is devastating knowing that you are going to lose all your memory as the hours, days, months, and years pass. This disease is a difficult case for anyone including the family.
Prior to Utermohlen’s death, he has created a heart aching documentation of himself, his self-portraits that depicts the stages of Alzheimer’s. The self-portraits have lasted for about five years documenting the slow deterioration of his brain. The self-portraits had been so incredible and unique on its own that it had been exhibited many times and even used for medical students to learn more about the disease.
Alzheimer Suffering Artist Drew His Self Portrait for Five Years until He Forgot How to Draw
Symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease incorporate not only memory loss or dementia and personality changes, but also a part of the brain. The ability to visualize the brain is critical to the artist. With the development of Alzheimer’s disease, due to the loss of the above functions, the art has become more abstract, fuzzy and blurred.
A paper by Patricia, the artist’s widow, talks about the reason these photos are so strong; “In these photos, we see William as a heartbreaking force to explain my own self-change, Efforts of fear and sorrow. It is difficult to say that the change in the portrait is caused by the loss of his artistic ability or by the change of his portrait. His mind, but in either case, they recorded an artist’s emotional hardship, watching his thoughts slip away from him little by little.
Check out bored panda for the self-portraits of William Utermohlen. His very first self-portrait was in 1967 which vividly shows his youth. In 1996, after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, his paintings were a little odd but had a touch of wonder that will keep you asking until you see the next self-portrait after another.
Artist William Utermohlen passed away in 2007 and after his death, his self-portraits were exhibited for many medical students. It’s a sad and true record of a person experiencing the disease first hand. The self-portraits alone describes what it is like to forget and have memories totally deleted including one’s own identity.
