I shut my eyes in order to see

I remember having read the following some where in the profile of thehigh profile former home secretary of Britain . Mr.David Blunkett hassome time himself described not being able to see as simply "aninconvenience".And the whole world knows it was never even that forhim, be it his public life or private life. Last week I was goingthrough my favourite " Robert Genn Twice weekly letter" an artist'scolumn to which I am addicted for the last few years.In his latestposting dated 1st February, he was writing on painting without sight,citing the example of a painter Esref Armagan, a 51-year-old nativeof Istanbul, who has been blind from birth.
"Researchers at Boston University and the University of Toronto havebeen analyzing his work, trying to dig into and understand his thoughtprocesses. They bombarded him with questions and subjected him tobrain scans while he paints.His work, which could be characterized asnaive or primitive,nevertheless shows some use of perspective andother sight skills." writes Robert Genn. According to the results ofthe brain scan, areas of his visual cortex were noted to light up asif he was seeing." ( As a radiologist, I understand that functionalMagneticResonance Imaging ( f MRI) can demonstrate it. Robert Genn alsoquotes John M. Kennedy of University of Toronto who says that "Armagan is an important figure in the history of picture-making, andin the history of knowledge. He has demonstrated for the first timethat a blind person can develop on his own pictorial skills the equalof most depiction by the sighted. This has not happened before."I am sure that though it might not have been demonstrated before withMRI scans, blind people all over the world would disagree, as Armagancan not be the first or last of blind painters and creative artists .

Let me quote in little detail form Robert Genn's posting.
" ...................... It's safe to say that a tactile understandingof objects such as cubes, cones, spheres, etc., go a long waytoward building a "hand's eye" picture. "A house is like abox," etc. Just as a sighted person looks out and sees, theblind reach out and feel, and this produces a similarunderstanding of the forms in our world. But Armagan's use ofcolour and cast shadow presents further areas of interest. Fora while he thought that shadows should be the same colour as theobjects that cast them, but someone corrected him on that.While he claims no formal art teacher, his knowledge of lightsources and colour choices come from the more or less casualremarks of those who look over his shoulder.

What I find so interesting about these studies and their resultsis not the quality of the work, but what appears to be thesimilarity to the processes, pitfalls and desirable effectsexperienced by sighted artists. The verbal nature of thingshelps to inform the "mind's eye" and interferes with the actualimage on the "eye's-eye." In Armagan there is no eye's-eye--noteven the perception of light. In him we have the extreme end oftheoretical imaging. Wonderfully though, his world is just asreal as any other painted world, and therein lies both itsfaults and its charms. One wonders what would happen should heturn his mind to thoughts of abstraction."
Robert Genn ends his column by quoting another great painter , Paulgauguin who said "I shut my eyes in order to see."

If any of my readers think a friend or artist may find value in RobertGenn's twice weekly letter , it is possible to get it regularly , bysubscribing to it voluntarily and can find out about it by going tohttp://www.painterskeys.com. The Twice-Weekly Letters are in Russianat http://painterskeys.narod.ru/ and in French athttp://www.painterskeys.com/fr/ as well .