delight
At 96 and legally blind, she's painting her best work
The world told her to take it easy. She declined.
Alice McGinty is 96, legally blind, and painting some of the best work of her life. She lives in Ohio, where she does resistance training three times a week, meditates daily, and posts videos on Instagram arguing that the years from 75 to 100 are the most important a person gets. "I feel this part of my life has been the most important of all," she says. "That we can do almost everything we did and even better." Macular degeneration took her fine vision, but not her sense of color. Now she paints in bright neons, landscapes and florals, with someone handing her the tubes. "Her last art show was some of her best work," says her collaborator, Anne Hartnett. McGinty offers herself to research trials studying healthy 96-year-olds. Scientists keep declining, on the grounds that she will not be around long enough to follow. She has had two art shows since the diagnosis, and she is planning her next trip.