Hi, Dennis
I had a look at the "migraine art", too. This is a
genre developed at the request of medical
professionals who asked migrainuers to share their
impressions of the experience using the media of their
choice.
In fact, I hope we can make a distinction here: one
cannot judge whether or not an artist is a migraineur
by looking at their work, overall. The artist may or
may not choose to depict the effects of a migraine as
a subject of their work.
So even after viewing the artwork you described, I
still feel it is safe to say that we cannot know
whether the VMs artist, or any artist, is a migraineur
unless we have access to a record of his subjective
experiences--such as is used by a physician to make a
diagnosis of migraine.
And I'm afraid we are still far from this point with
our VMs author/illustrator (actually, we do not even
know whether the author is the illustrator, or not).
Most of the resources I find refer to phosphenes as
"flashes" or "sparks". These terms do nothing to
enhance the impression that phosphenes are experienced
as long-lasting impressions of light relegated to one
precise area of the visual field.
In fact, if I encountered anything like that, I would
be suspicious about such visual disturbances and check
with an opthamologist to make sure there is not a
problem with the retina.
I have been diagnosed with classical migraines, also
known as visual migraines, or migraine explosions.
Send your snail mail address if you would like a
statement from my doctor. Smile. My own experience
with phosphenes is that they are shimmering, which by
definition means that they do not occupy a certain
"location" in the visual field for any length of time
greater than a fraction of a second. Although they
cluster in a certain region, this cluster continually
moves through the visual field. These phosphenes do
not leave me with an impression of a certain point of
light in a specific area of my visual field; in fact,
to the contrary, by the time they fade, there is
nothing but a blind spot left where the shimmering
lights of the phosphenes used to be.
You have your subjective experience, and I have mine.
If we were to compare your artwork depicting your
experience and mine, we would still need a record of
our subjective experience to demonstrate that we were
expressing our experience of our respective phosphenes
and not something else. And even then, some people
would not be convinced without a doctor's statment.