Ember Looten hasn't let a little hiccup like legal blindness prevent her from dedicating her career to the visual arts.
"It's something that's always come naturally to me," she said.
As a toddler, Looten would paint and draw, and her parents would offer her words of positive encouragement.
"I honestly just paint what I see," she said.
When they see her work, many people notice Looten's ability to capture heightened colors and contrasts.
"That's actually how my vision works. I see more in blurs of color than I do shapes," she said. "So when I paint, I actually paint the colors I am seeing. And if they are laid over correctly side by side or on top of each other, it comes out as a recognizable image.
"I'll even paint the negative space first ... so I can focus more on the blurs, if that makes sense."
Specifically, her eyesight is 20/600 in her right eye. With a corrective lens, her eyesight is 20/200 in her left eye. She also lacks depth perception and peripheral vision. Born four months premature, she lost her sight when the pressure from the oxygen tank detached her retinas.
"This is my 20/20. I have no idea what someone with perfect vision sees," she said.
Currently, a showing of her work can be viewed as part of the People's Choice exhibition at CapitalArts Gallery, 1203 Missouri Blvd. The show will remain open until June 5.
Her favorite things to paint are portraits, especially of people caught in a candid moment. Her most-current work is a series of tavern scenes from bars around central Missouri. (McNally's, an Irish-themed pub in Columbia, is a favorite.) Her work is marked by an intense use of color, the deft re-creation of incandescent light sources and realistic portraits.
While some people have negative connotations of bars, Looten doesn't.
"My dad, for as long as I can remember, played on a pool league," she said. " I remember going into the bars with him and playing pool and eating the hamburgers and the french fries, and it was delicious."
She finds bars fascinating places to people-watch.
The idea prompted her to paint portraits of the bartenders from each bar. And, later, she turned the idea inside-out.
"I thought: How interesting would it be to paint this scene - that I love so much - from the bartender's perspective?" she said.
The first part of her process is to go into the tavern while it's empty and take photos. She returns on a busy night and takes up to 200 more photos of each bar.
"The bartenders were nice enough to let me be in their way, and in their business, on a busy night," she said.
She people watches to get a feel for her subjects' personalities and paints their facial expressions from memory.
The actual painting happens off site. To see what she's creating, she leans in close - really close - to the canvas.
"I've gotten paint on my nose before," she said. "That, and I use extremely small brushes."
Her career goal is to support herself as a fine artist.
"It's definitely what I want to do. I'm going to paint as much as I can and make a name for myself. If it doesn't pan out, I'm going to go into print-making or graphics design," she said.
In 2009, she earned an associate's degree in graphic design and print-making technology from Ozark Technical College. In 2013, she graduated from Columbia College with a bachelor's of fine arts in drawing and painting, with an emphasis in print-making.
It was at Columbia College that Looten "relearned her love of making art by hand," she said.
Modern technology has revolutionized how blind people make it in the world.
She uses a video magnifier connected to a laptop to "see" the world.
"It will zone in on what you're focusing on," she said. "I was extremely excited when I first got it because my little sister used to play soccer. And I used to sit on the bench and I'd clap whenever everyone else clapped, but I couldn't never really see which one she was on the field. I took my laptop and the CCTV screen out there, and I could actually see the beads of sweat dripping down her forehead. It was the most exciting game I'd ever watched."
Today, she uses a portable CCTV system to see things such as the overhead menus at restaurants.
Looten was introduced to canes and Braille at an early age, but her parents decided to mainstream her into the public schools. (She's a 2006 graduate of Cole R-5 Schools in Eugene.)
She said her parents never let her use her blindness as an excuse.
"If I failed, at least I failed trying," she said.
Today, instead of experiencing her blindness as an inconvenience, she believes it lends her a unique perspective.
"I wouldn't trade my eyesight for anything in the world. The only thing I would love to be able to do is drive," she said. "But other than that, I absolutely love the way I see. I think it gives me a unique perspective on the world, and that's how I was raised."