Richard Moore On Skateboarding, Art, And Retinitis Pigmentosa

Image by Sam Coady.

Richard Moore is a skateboarder and artist who lives in Melbourne.

He also happens to be blind. In 2018, at the age of twenty nine, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), an untreatable degenerative eye disease that leads to severe vision impairment. Soon after his diagnosis he found a video of fellow blind skateboarder, Dan Mancina skateboarding and decided to start skateboarding again at thirty, relearning everything from scratch.  

Over the last few years, I’ve seen Richard come back into his own. He’s starting to make art again, go to local hardcore shows, moved back to Melbourne from regional South Australia, and enjoy skating more than ever. Richard is a friend that I look up to for reasons that go far beyond his blindness. He has overcome so many hardships, fought through and against societal expectations, and gave a big ‘fuck you’ to social norms, always doing exactly what he wants to do, making the absolute most out of his situation and picking up old passions and hobbies on the way. It’s refreshing and incredibly inspiring. We always have great conversations when we see each other and this time was no different. 

Portrait by Josh Sabini.

I think the best way to start this off is by giving a little introduction of yourself and who you are. So yeah, would you like to take it from here?

My name is Richard Moore, I am currently thirty five and living in Melbourne. I have a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. My particular strain of RP is the RPGR strain which means I will be facing complete blindness by my fourth decade of life, so I have a couple years to go before I’m completely blind. As far as I know I am the only blind skateboarder in Australia, if there’s anyone else out there, please hit me up, I am sick of being the only one.

How much vision do you have now?

I am down to about five per cent of functional vision. Less than five degrees of field and I have been legally blind for six years now. It is changing and evolving on almost a weekly or fortnightly basis, my vision is so scrambled now.

When did it start happening?

I don’t actually know. I first got diagnosed with RP in 2018. I was working this office job and I was having these dizzy spells when I was walking home from work. I went to the hospital; they sent me to the eye and ear hospital. There they did the field test and they made me do it twice because they thought I was really tired. At that point my field was eleven degrees, ten degrees is the legal blindness threshold in Australia. What I thought I was seeing was normal, but it turned out I already had lost quite a significant point of vision at that point. I was having what felt like this weird tunnel vision and dizziness because my brain had finally caught up to what I couldn’t see and was basically having a meltdown. Then after a few tests they told me I had all the signs of RP, which wasn’t a huge surprise as my mum has it and it runs through all her side of the family.

Art courtesy of Richard Moore.

Were you still riding BMX at that point?

Yeah, I was still riding a little bit. I grew up in a small rural town called Kinglake, I started skating when I was nine. We would skate during the week; we were allowed to skate at primary school during recess and lunch because it was the only concrete in town. I would ride BMX on the weekend. Once I hit high school skating took a back seat. Then when I moved to Melbourne to go to university in 2009, I started riding BMX and skating again. I felt better on the bike, so I was riding, filming and had a BMX distro. I would still watch skate videos at this time because ninety nine percent of BMX is wack [laughs].

How did you get back into skateboarding? 

In 2018 just after I had been diagnosed with RP, I randomly saw a clip of Dan Mancina on an Adidas trip in Japan, and he was skating with a white cane. I was shocked, then I did some digging and found out he has the same disease and is completely blind. At that time, I was worried that I wasn’t going to keep on doing all the things I was doing with BMX as it started to progress. Then it rapidly progressed – in the first two years I lost 80 percent of what I could see. Having found Dan made me realise I could do something with this. So, one day I just started skateboarding again and it’s been five years now.

How long after seeing that clip of Dan did you reach out to him?

It was definitely a few months because as silly as it sounds, I didn’t feel blind enough. Once I started to notice the changes with my vision, I realised I was going to have to start using a cane soon. When I started going through my orientation mobility training for the cane is when I hit up Dan, he replied, and we kept in touch from there. Through Dan I found other blind skateboarders like Nick Mullins…

Nick Mullins is so good, it’s crazy.

Man, he is like the Tony Hawk of blind skaters [laughs]. He was good before he lost his sight. Then yeah, I met other people in that community like Anthony Ferraro, Coco Atama and so many others. There are only around five or six of us around the world which is crazy when you think about it.

Image by casey foley.

How does it feel being able to connect with those people? Is it nice knowing you have other people going through the same thing?

Yeah, it has been cool because we can all bitch about the same struggles. In 2022 I went over to the States to meet up with Dan, Nick, and Justin. Nick organised this big blind skate meet up in Michigan. It was a surreal experience because you haven’t been on a blind skate session until you’ve been on a blind skate session [laughs]. It was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It was cool to see how the guys who are at zero vision go about their daily life because that’s what I am bracing for. Seeing those guys and how they do it was nice.

What was it like coming back into skating after you were diagnosed with RP?

In the beginning I didn’t have any expectations for myself other than that I was coming back into this like I am starting skating from scratch, because that’s what I was doing. I had to teach myself how to ollie again because I have this thing in my hand that throws everything off. It was hard working out what hand to hold the cane in too. I just started out skating small ledges because I was like this makes sense and I can get the motion back. I was like a kid stepping on the board for the first time and in itself that was really refreshing.

Yeah, did it feel nice having this thing that was new going through this crazy period?

Yeah, old, and familiar, yet new and exciting at the same time. I am going through a bit of a rebirth with that now where I am completely in love with it again. This is my autistic side coming out where I am so engrossed in it, I have six different boards setup that are all different shapes, and I am really nerding out on how the body can move on a board. I am just doing what feels good and what makes me stoked.

Yeah, have the new boards given you a breath of fresh air?

Yeah, everything from the six-inch polariser to the fourteen-inch eggzilla. It has all been so fun working out what I can do on each board.

I know you’ve posted about it on Instagram in the past, but how much and what can you see when you go skating?

When I approach the obstacle, I can get an idea of what it is from a little bit of a distance, but I can’t see the thing in full. I know what a ledge or a rail looks like but because of my basically non-existent field and depth perception it disappears when I get close. For example, when I ollie up to something I can see it as I roll up to it, then as I get closer it disappears and I need to use the cane to gauge where it is. Yeah, so if I am skating something new, I really need to take the time to map out where I am at, gauge how high things are and work out the timing in my head.

Have you mapped out Fitzroy Park in your head?

Yeah. I know exactly where everything is there. The hardest part is just kids because they drop out of my field of vision.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’ve seen you dodge boards too. It's so impressive.

Well, that’s the thing. I am so on guard the whole time I am going skating. My eyes have essentially a power meter and they essentially drain out throughout the session because they dart around so quickly. I am trying to take in so much so quickly. It is like a little pinhole scanning around. You can hear someone come off a board and I am instantly like ‘Where is it’.

Something I wanted to ask you about was how do you feel when people come to you and be like ‘I can’t even ride a skateboard, but you can ride a skateboard blind!’.

The ableist Olympics. When people say that it’s like what are you measuring your life worth against? I don’t want to hear that. I am not doing this to be some super inspirational person. I’m just another guy going through some shit. I am influenced by all sorts of different people, especially my friends who are artists and skateboarders who are doing really cool shit. Whenever I gas them up about how cool what they’re doing is, there is no mention of disability or ability, it’s just they’re doing something that I think is interesting and that’s sick.

As a society I think we’ve drawn this line of what is normal and that anything outside of that line is seen as either different or disabled. It is a blessing and a curse, but I would much rather have someone come to me and say, ‘I really like that drawing you did’, just because they like the imagery not because I’m blind. That’s been something I’ve really been struggling with lately. Now I’m feeling most confident in myself finding that lane where I’m just another creative doing their thing, but I just happen to be blind.

Image by Sam Coady.

Have you ever felt like you were a super inspirational person?

Not really. In the beginning I was struggling with this whole thing around how I would present myself and I felt a bit like I had to be this beacon for other blind, vision impaired and disabled people in the skate and art communities. Then I was like fuck that, I am just going to do me. I am a skateboarder and artist first, not a blind person first.

In the last year you’ve gotten back into drawing and making art. How did you get back into it?

Straight out of high school I went to university and got a graphic art degree. Throughout my teens I was artistic, always painting and drawing. I thought making art was another thing I wouldn’t be able to do again, but with technology being where it is now, I’ve been able to start drawing again. I got an iPad Pro and using voice over, I’m able to draw on the iPad.

Being able to get into that has been beneficial because I am able now to have an extra outlet outside of skateboarding. It has also let me explore the shit I’m going through in my head. At the start I was just drawing for the sake of drawing. Now I’m using it as therapy. It has been a way for me to deal with some of those concepts because it’s not what you see on the internet where it is like ‘I am blind and I’m living my best life!’, it fucking sucks. It is this thing of where I have gone through so many struggles in my life whether it’s been family member suicides to alcohol addiction to struggling with my own neuro make up and neurodiversity to realising that I am quite far down on the spectrum. Navigating the world with all of that, then navigating the world with rapid onset vision loss, things have been really dark. A lot of that is reflected in the art I’m creating now because I am battling those demons on the screen.

It feels like in the past year you are coming back to everything you were into growing up. Going back to shows and doing art. How does it feel being like ‘Okay, you know what I’m going to do everything I was doing before’?

Yeah, it has been amazing. I feel like I am eighteen again, I have just left home, and the world is brand new. It’s been incredible. It has been awesome to rediscover those parts of myself, not feeling like I am chained to a certain way of living. Yeah, I have this cane in my hand now and yeah, I walk around and crash into things, but I can still live my life. If someone wants to be like you can or can’t do something it’s like, fuck you. I’m just going to do me.

It is so inspirational though, like even when you started posting those drawings, they were so good from the start. The craziest thing about it is that you probably haven’t drawn properly in six or seven years and the drawings were good from the start.

Thank you! Yeah, it was even longer than that since I was actively drawing.

You also restarted WireTap, your clothing company. How did that start up again?

Yeah, so that was my BMX distro that I had. I was just bringing in just a bunch of niche BMX clothing labels. Just stuff that I was into. I really liked the name and concept so after the vision loss started, I decided to pack it in and keep it on the back burner. Then while I was living in Adelaide I was like, maybe I’ll do this adaptive brand. It was all self-funded and after one capsule I was like this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Then after a year I hung it up again. Now having my resurgence with my art I’ve brought it back and am using it as an outlet. I’m making small runs of stuff that I am into and hoping people are into it.

Thanks for doing this. It’s been great. Do you have anyone you want to thank?

My mum and family, Alana, all the homies - you know who you are, Cameron Sparkes and Scoady [Sam Coady]  at NB#, Alex and the Hemley shop crew, Casey Foley, you for taking the time to do this interview and Skateboarding in general.