
Pablo Picasso once said: "Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen." On March 5, 2019, I attended a debate at the Royal Drawing School in London, about the late work of the blind British painter Sargy Mann (1937-2015) (Figure 1). Blind painters such as Sargy Mann teach us about perception. The debate reminded me that perception connects all our senses -including the visual, that there are multiple ways to perceive visually and therefore, multiple ways to produce and appreciate visual art.
Sargy Mann developed cataracts from the age of 35. At the age of 42, he got retinal detachment, in one, then both eyes, causing progressive degradation of vision. He eventually lost his sight in 2005, acutely, by his 68th birthday. He continued to paint for 10 years until his death.
As a painter, Sargy observed some changes in the process of losing his vision, that pertained to subject matter, color, details and authenticity (Figures 2A and 2B). Originally a landscape painter, as he became blind, figures became increasingly important. He explained: "Because I couldn't see people anymore it became more important to paint them." His wife Frances became his favorite model: " I suppose you always paint the things you most want to see." He carefully documented the other changes he observed in his writings (Perceptual systems, an inexhaustible reservoir of information and the importance of art). For example, he noticed that he "started using color in a much more intuitive and decorative way." He also noted that "the extraordinary paradox is that going blind has taught (him) to see more and differently". Finally, he talked about how blindness led him to more authenticity: "When I started going seriously blind that option of going out and finding Monet’s subject wasn’t there, and because I was so thrown back on my own limitations, curiously, I think this led me into a much more personal world, a world that was more my experience and my way of responding to it."
Sargy's son Michael and wife Frances, present at the conference, gave details about Sargy's painting process as he was becoming blind, based on geometry, wood sticks, strings, touch, Blu-Tack and limited feedback from friends and family (Figures 3). He would typically use his wife as a model, figuring out the proportions of her body and its position in space thanks to a sophisticated system of sticks with which he would make measurements that he would project onto the canvas: "I had by this time devised a more sophisticated system of measuring at greater distances, using longer sticks and then, for very long distances, taut pieces of string (...) I had trained as an engineer before I went to art school and done a lot of mathematics, and this scientific side of my personality is unquestionably a part of who I am, and I think it has played a much bigger part in the paintings I have made since being totally blind." He would then draw by sticking Blu-Tack pieces of various sizes on the canvas, mix colors from tubes disposed in a specific order on his palette, and, eventually, apply the paint on the canvas, guided by the Blu-Tack pieces he would follow with his fingers. Once he was done, he would ask for general visual feedback, from his friends and family. His questions were reportedly not specific; instead, he would ask about the impression, or the mood of the painting. For example, he would inquire whether the painting evoked sunset rather than sunrise as he intended. He would then correct the painting accordingly, to fit his objective. Once the painting was finished, he would remove the Blu-Tack.

Figure 3: Sargy Mann's painting process. TOP LEFT: Sagry Mann exploring his environment with his wood stick. TOP RIGHT: Sargy Mann painting in his studio, 2015. LOWER LEFT: Paint tubes in Sargy's studio, 2015. LOWER RIGHT: Pieces on Blu-Tack on the canvas. https://www.cadogancontemporary.com/artist/sargy-mann/?section=video
The discussion panel at the Royal Drawing School in London was diverse (Figure 4A). The neuroestheticist Semir Zeki (University College London), primarily interested in how the brain works, pointed out that Sargy's experience was a nice demonstration that one can see while being blind. Indeed, the perceived image is fed by diverse inputs. The visual pathway constitutes one of these inputs, but there are cortical connections that also feed the reconstruction of the image in one's mind. Sargy described the process in his own words: "I get tactile information which my brain is able to translate into visual information. So my subject, what is in my head, is a visual experience, even though there is no optical input".
When Sargy wrote about his experience of visual perception as a blind painter, he often referred to James J. Gibson (Figure 4B). James Gibson (1904-1979) was an American psychologist and major contributor to the field of visual perception. From The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), Sargy quotes Gibson writing: “The environment provides an inexhaustible reservoir of information. Some men spend most of their lives looking, others listening, and a few connoisseurs spend their time in smelling, tasting or touching, (...) Looking and listening continue to improve with experience. (...) Getting information to the receptors becomes troublesome when the lens of the eye or the bones of the ear lose their useful flexibility but higher order variables in light and sound can still be discovered by the artist and musician.”
Semir Zeki emphasizes that he is interested in how the brain works in "the common man", not specifically in artists or art historians with highly trained brains. We can still learn a lot from Sargy's experience as a blind, experienced painter. He learned for years how to paint not only what he was seeing, but what he was experiencing. "If your subject is your own experience, as long as you have an experience, you have a subject. That has turned out to be true, even in total blindness." he said. Sargy described in great details his experience as a blind painter. For example, he explained how he could see colors right after he became totally blind: "I put ultramarine on a brush and painted the top right hand corner of the canvas and I had one of the most extraordinary sensations of my life. I saw the canvas go blue. It wasn’t a projection, it wasn’t me remembering what it was like, it was a percept for sure, but a percept clearly created somewhere in my visual cortex." Clearly, Sargy could access his inner visual perception, while being blind. He could see with his brain, not with his eyes.
People can even start painting after becoming blind. This is the case of John Bramblitt (Texan artist, born 1971), who became blind because of a problem in his brain, not in his eyes (Figures 5). He developed cortical blindness between his teenage years and the age of 30. This condition affects his occipital cortex, and therefore his processing of visual information and rendering of perceived image in his mind - his actual eyes are normal. He can't see colors or shapes and when he perceives light, it triggers an uncomfortable, non-visual, impression. He was a draftsman before becoming blind, had taken classes in drawing and illustration, which probably trained his visual system: " I did not start painting until after I lost my eyesight -- drawing and illustration though were incredibly important to me."
Semir Zeki emphasizes that he is interested in how the brain works in "the common man", not specifically in artists or art historians with highly trained brains. We can still learn a lot from Sargy's experience as a blind, experienced painter. He learned for years how to paint not only what he was seeing, but what he was experiencing. "If your subject is your own experience, as long as you have an experience, you have a subject. That has turned out to be true, even in total blindness." he said. Sargy described in great details his experience as a blind painter. For example, he explained how he could see colors right after he became totally blind: "I put ultramarine on a brush and painted the top right hand corner of the canvas and I had one of the most extraordinary sensations of my life. I saw the canvas go blue. It wasn’t a projection, it wasn’t me remembering what it was like, it was a percept for sure, but a percept clearly created somewhere in my visual cortex." Clearly, Sargy could access his inner visual perception, while being blind. He could see with his brain, not with his eyes.
People can even start painting after becoming blind. This is the case of John Bramblitt (Texan artist, born 1971), who became blind because of a problem in his brain, not in his eyes (Figures 5). He developed cortical blindness between his teenage years and the age of 30. This condition affects his occipital cortex, and therefore his processing of visual information and rendering of perceived image in his mind - his actual eyes are normal. He can't see colors or shapes and when he perceives light, it triggers an uncomfortable, non-visual, impression. He was a draftsman before becoming blind, had taken classes in drawing and illustration, which probably trained his visual system: " I did not start painting until after I lost my eyesight -- drawing and illustration though were incredibly important to me."
As Sargy, John eventually found a way to paint his inner vision of the world (Figures 6A and 6B). "Art has opened up the world to me, in a whole new way (...) Painting is the way I know the world today, it's my connection to it. (...) I wanted to tell people that I was still in here, hey I am still here!" As Sargy, he noticed that his way of seeing or drawing the world evolved as he became blind, in his case in a more detailed and emotional way. His perception became more detailed: "I see less, but when I do see I see with a lot more details". He also finds himself more able to perceive and convey people's emotions on the canvas: "Many of the most interesting parts of a person are invisible and hidden from view anyway; I think my blindness might be just the lens that is needed to see into that world."
John's drawing process is based on touch, too (Figure 7A and 7B). He taught himself how to draw elevated lines with paint that dries very fast. "I started to learn orientation mobility (...) using a guide dog (...). I started laying the lines on the canvas the same way that I would travel in the street (...) It's like a map in my mind (on the canvas), I know exactly where I am", he says. Regarding colors, he marks his paint bottles in braille, and dilutes the colors with media of various thicknesses, so that he recognizes colors by touching their texture. When he mixes two colors of different thicknesses, he knows when he got the right mix of hues when he feels the right intermediate texture of paint. "You don't need eye sight to create or appreciate art. Art is something that's in your mind, it's in your heart, it's something that's internal, that has nothing to do with your eyesight". John nicely summarized his experience as a blind painter: " While we think of the eyes whenever we think of vision; it is in fact the brain where vision takes place (...) It's like when you start feeling the music instead of hearing it".
There are also artists who are able to paint the real world, without ever seeing it with their eyes. Eşref Armağan (born 1953) is a Turkish artist born blind (Figure 8). He has produced multiple landscape paintings, where the use of color and perspective is remarkably true to the world as perceived by sighted people.
Similarly to Sargy and John, Eşref's painting process is based on touch. It is also informed by descriptions of the visual world by sighted people (Figures 9A and 9B). He has the capacity of finely exploring objects by touching them, then drawing them within minutes on a piece of paper, from various perspectives. He can perceive buildings by following their contours with his hands. He can explore a picture as well, if indented from the back, or a painting painted with thick paint, and copy it accurately. He is reportedly highly gifted at orienting himself and navigating through physical space (he just needs to feel it once), and at remembering places or shapes. He also learned about color and perspective "not from any formal teachers, but from friends and casual acquaintances". For example, since he was not able to see it with his own eyes, he had to be told that things in the distance look smaller than the ones near you, that the shadow of an object has not the same color as the object itself, or that some colors are more flashy than other. Thanks to these felt and learned inputs, Eşref has developed a vast and quite accurate mental visual representation of the world that surrounds him.
When he creates a painting, Eşref first conceives and "sees" a complete picture in his head, that he mentally fills with colors. He then draws lines and shapes with a sharp pencil on a "Sewell raised line drawing kit", and feels the indentation of the mark of the pencil on the paper with his other hand, as he draws. He then "uses only 5 colors plus black and white and mixes them to represent the image he has in mind. From then on it is a case of careful concentration to complete a picture to his satisfaction."
Eşref's tactile, spatial and visual giftedness drew the attention of neuroscientists who analyzed his brain activity while drawing an object he just felt with his hands, versus scribbling randomly, in an MRI machine (Figures 10 and 11). They found that the activation pattern in Eşref's brain while drawing shared similarities with sighted painters: the activity in fronto-parietal regions "may correspond to transformations from perception to two-dimensional image production and to the complex sensory-motor coordination needed for drawing". Most remarkably, areas specifically involved in visual perception, such as the primary and secondary visual areas in the occipital cortex (corresponding to mid and peripheral visual field perception) were also activated in this blind painter (Neural and behavioral correlates of drawing in an early blind painter: A case study, Amedi et al, Brain Res. 2008 Nov 25; 1242: 252–262) (Figures 10 and 11). While this brain activation pattern may be engaged in proficient braille readers when they "read with their hands", Eşref is not one of them. These regions are also engaged during tasks of verbal memory, but in Eşref's case, they were barely activated during the recollection of the object, only during the drawing phase. This suggested that drawing, informed by touching, was able to engage typical early visual circuits while shortcutting optical input in Eşref's brain: the artist's brain was able to see with his touch. It is unclear how Eşref was able to acquire this remarkable ability. But this study demonstrates that the brain has the ability to learn from scratch how to see based on tactile and verbal inputs only (not optical). These findings reinforce the notion of transmodal brain plasticity (sensory inputs are interrelated ), very robust in Eşref's case. As Alvaro Pascual-Leone, one of the authors of the study, put it: reversibly, "when we see a cup, we are also feeling with our mind's hand. Seeing is as much touching as it is seeing (...) but we may be more unaware of (seeing with our touch)."
Eşref's tactile, spatial and visual giftedness drew the attention of neuroscientists who analyzed his brain activity while drawing an object he just felt with his hands, versus scribbling randomly, in an MRI machine (Figures 10 and 11). They found that the activation pattern in Eşref's brain while drawing shared similarities with sighted painters: the activity in fronto-parietal regions "may correspond to transformations from perception to two-dimensional image production and to the complex sensory-motor coordination needed for drawing". Most remarkably, areas specifically involved in visual perception, such as the primary and secondary visual areas in the occipital cortex (corresponding to mid and peripheral visual field perception) were also activated in this blind painter (Neural and behavioral correlates of drawing in an early blind painter: A case study, Amedi et al, Brain Res. 2008 Nov 25; 1242: 252–262) (Figures 10 and 11). While this brain activation pattern may be engaged in proficient braille readers when they "read with their hands", Eşref is not one of them. These regions are also engaged during tasks of verbal memory, but in Eşref's case, they were barely activated during the recollection of the object, only during the drawing phase. This suggested that drawing, informed by touching, was able to engage typical early visual circuits while shortcutting optical input in Eşref's brain: the artist's brain was able to see with his touch. It is unclear how Eşref was able to acquire this remarkable ability. But this study demonstrates that the brain has the ability to learn from scratch how to see based on tactile and verbal inputs only (not optical). These findings reinforce the notion of transmodal brain plasticity (sensory inputs are interrelated ), very robust in Eşref's case. As Alvaro Pascual-Leone, one of the authors of the study, put it: reversibly, "when we see a cup, we are also feeling with our mind's hand. Seeing is as much touching as it is seeing (...) but we may be more unaware of (seeing with our touch)."

Figure 11: Brain activation pattern of Eşref Armağan while drawing. The green areas indicate regions activated when drawing (versus scribbling). The area located at the back of the brain (near the midline of the figure in the 4 brain scans) is the occipital lobe. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518845/
The influence of the history of art on Eşref's paintings is remarkable, given the limited visual access to his environment. The painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) suggested that the artist depends not only on himself, but also on the contemporary context he lives in and on the history of painting. In parallel, the psychologist James J Gibson (1904-1979) suggested that perception is the compilation of the environment and the interaction of the person with this environment ("Ecological Psychology"). Eşref has accessed his environment and the history of painting by touching and by learning from friends and acquaintances, so that his paintings are influenced by them: his use of classical perspective, or his choice of colors reflects this influence. Sargy, on the other hand, made progresses when he progressively distantiated himself from his visual environment and from the history of painting. This was hard for him at the beginning because he had been very much inspired by painters like Pierre Bonnard or Paul Cezanne (see his writings about these painters here and here). However, becoming blind eventually freed him from the history of painting and allowed him to focus more on his own inner vision, towards more authenticity. In fact, he described it as a liberating experience: "When my sight was relatively normal (...) I think probably I was always a bit on the timid side. I think I was too influenced by the masters I revered (...) when I started going seriously blind that option of going out and finding Monet’s subject wasn’t there, and because I was so thrown back on my own limitations, curiously, I think this led me into a much more personal world, a world that was more my experience and my way of responding to it."
If we look at art history, Monet went through a similar process of visual loss when he painted the waterlilies at the end of his life, with bilateral cataracts that modified color perception. He, too, used oil paint by memory (memory of the way colors looked like in nature and memory of the way colors were positioned on his palette). However, to my knowledge, he never used tactile input. Instead, since he was still able to perceive light, colors and shapes, but in a less detailed way, he enlarged his canvas to accommodate his visual needs, and finished his paintings in the studio, working from his perceived memory rather than directly from nature. As Sargy would have put it, Monet painted his visual experience (would I dare calling this his visual impression?!). This may explain why the waterlilies canvases are so large, a bit fuzzy and very blue.
In general, painters with no visual impairment often paint their visual "experience", too. Salvador Dali, for example, was particularly aware that his subject matter was a mix of his personal visual and psychological perception of reality. He even gave it a name: "paranoiac knowledge". His paintings may provide a realistic first impression (ex: perspective, everyday objects), but they are mostly the illustration of his inner world -his experience.
The question of differentiating the "real" world, from the "perceived/inner world" and the rendering of the world through art, has been unresolved for centuries. In the Allegory of the Cave (in Republic (514a–520a)), Plato suggested that only philosophers are able to perceive the "true" reality (the objects passing in front of the cave), while the prisoners (aka: the rest of us), chained to the wall of the cave, in front of the fire, only see a projection on the wall of the shadows of the objects passing by (Figure 12). In Plato's cave, would blind artist's paintings be categorized as a representation of the real objects or the projected shadows?
Plato suggested that the human condition is limited by the way our senses perceive reality (shadows of the objects), hiding the world of pure form, pure fact from us (the actual objects). He implied that the world of pure form is different and more valuable than the world of perceived reality. In the case of blind painters, I would argue that, on the contrary, the artists' senses enabled them to see reality in a more accurate, pure way. Sargy said he saw "more" and in a more authentic way. John says he sees things in more details and in a more felt way. Eşref also thrives at rendering his drawing quite representative of the reality, despite the absence of exposure to centuries of visual art.
Plato also suggested that if philosophers are able to escape the cave and see real objects under the real sun, major artists will continue to project the shadows of puppets with the fire light (aka the human made light) on the wall in front of the rest of us, bound to the cave forever. I don't think that Sargy, John or Eşref apply any filters between the reality and the viewer, as do artists in Plato's cave, since they don't have access to visual reality at the first place. Instead, they project their reality on the canvas, and this reality is as absolute and real as Plato's one: "In the 25 years of worsening sight before total blindness, because of the continual deterioration of the anatomical part of my visual system, I had to make enormous demands on the brain part, the visual cortex, in order that I should go on accessing some of the more — the infinitely more — of reality, that was still available to my depleted eye." said Sargy.
If we look at art history, Monet went through a similar process of visual loss when he painted the waterlilies at the end of his life, with bilateral cataracts that modified color perception. He, too, used oil paint by memory (memory of the way colors looked like in nature and memory of the way colors were positioned on his palette). However, to my knowledge, he never used tactile input. Instead, since he was still able to perceive light, colors and shapes, but in a less detailed way, he enlarged his canvas to accommodate his visual needs, and finished his paintings in the studio, working from his perceived memory rather than directly from nature. As Sargy would have put it, Monet painted his visual experience (would I dare calling this his visual impression?!). This may explain why the waterlilies canvases are so large, a bit fuzzy and very blue.
In general, painters with no visual impairment often paint their visual "experience", too. Salvador Dali, for example, was particularly aware that his subject matter was a mix of his personal visual and psychological perception of reality. He even gave it a name: "paranoiac knowledge". His paintings may provide a realistic first impression (ex: perspective, everyday objects), but they are mostly the illustration of his inner world -his experience.
The question of differentiating the "real" world, from the "perceived/inner world" and the rendering of the world through art, has been unresolved for centuries. In the Allegory of the Cave (in Republic (514a–520a)), Plato suggested that only philosophers are able to perceive the "true" reality (the objects passing in front of the cave), while the prisoners (aka: the rest of us), chained to the wall of the cave, in front of the fire, only see a projection on the wall of the shadows of the objects passing by (Figure 12). In Plato's cave, would blind artist's paintings be categorized as a representation of the real objects or the projected shadows?
Plato suggested that the human condition is limited by the way our senses perceive reality (shadows of the objects), hiding the world of pure form, pure fact from us (the actual objects). He implied that the world of pure form is different and more valuable than the world of perceived reality. In the case of blind painters, I would argue that, on the contrary, the artists' senses enabled them to see reality in a more accurate, pure way. Sargy said he saw "more" and in a more authentic way. John says he sees things in more details and in a more felt way. Eşref also thrives at rendering his drawing quite representative of the reality, despite the absence of exposure to centuries of visual art.
Plato also suggested that if philosophers are able to escape the cave and see real objects under the real sun, major artists will continue to project the shadows of puppets with the fire light (aka the human made light) on the wall in front of the rest of us, bound to the cave forever. I don't think that Sargy, John or Eşref apply any filters between the reality and the viewer, as do artists in Plato's cave, since they don't have access to visual reality at the first place. Instead, they project their reality on the canvas, and this reality is as absolute and real as Plato's one: "In the 25 years of worsening sight before total blindness, because of the continual deterioration of the anatomical part of my visual system, I had to make enormous demands on the brain part, the visual cortex, in order that I should go on accessing some of the more — the infinitely more — of reality, that was still available to my depleted eye." said Sargy.

Figure 12. Plato's Allegory of the Cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave Right: https://www.google.com/search?q=plato+cave&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg-_Di3cHhAhXnGTQIHe4qBbcQ_AUIDigB&biw=1186&bih=774#imgrc=RULNTlOWVvaMbM:
Neuroesthetics can inform some of the most fundamental questions raised by artists and philosophers in a way that was not available at the time of Plato. Neurobiology is now able to reconciliate both "real" and "perceived" worlds: they are both grounded in neurotransmitters and synapses, and they all happen in the brain. Now that we better understand how the brain works, we know that the dichotomic difference between true reality and perceived reality does not exist in the biological world. Both of them coexist on a continuum, that varies in time and from one person to the other. The visual perception of images in blind painters such as Sargy is grounded in the reality of a neurological substrate which is as valid (and real) as the one of sighted painters like Monet or Dali, or the one Plato is talking about. Sargy, for example, described in great details his search for "the real", challenging Plato's conception of artists: "(I am interested) in paintings that open the eyes of the viewer, and therefore, in a way, bring the viewer closer to the truth: (The kind of painting I am interested in) can give the viewer what he would not see were he in the place of the artist. It can give him something essentially and qualitatively different from that, something he could never experience except through the medium of that particular painting. It can give him what the artist saw or imagined.” (Shared Experience, 1996) (Figure 13)
"Over the next year, or eighteen months (after becoming blind),", Sargy noticed that "(he) largely forgot that (he) was painting blind — this was simply once again what (he) did." I find remarkable that he was able to switch from the visual perception by his eyes to the visual perception by his brain in a way that was barely noticeable on his canvases. His subject matter and his process may have changed, but his drawing and colors did not significantly, and his paintings were recognizable has his, at least from my viewer's perspective. His eyes' and his brain's visual universes were well integrated. "I have been thrilled to discover that I can make paintings without sight, and that this activity is far more like a continuation of my previous painting experience than I could possibly have imagined." This coherence between the actual world and the perceptual experience of Sargy may be what made him a truly great visual artist.
References regarding Sargy Mann
http://sargymannarchive.com/
https://www.cadogancontemporary.com/artist/sargy-mann/?section=video
Article in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/nov/21/sargy-mann-blind-painter-tim-adams
References regarding John Bramblitt
https://bramblitt.com
https://www.boredpanda.com/blind-painter-john-bramblitt/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Documentary:
https://vimeo.com/87906998
Interview "Art if transcendence":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrEFcp6A5Ig
References regarding Eşref Armağan
http://esrefarmagan.com/
https://vimeo.com/33488357
Scientific article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518845/
Article in the New Scientist:
https://esrefarmagan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/New-Scientist.pdf
References regarding Sargy Mann
http://sargymannarchive.com/
https://www.cadogancontemporary.com/artist/sargy-mann/?section=video
Article in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/nov/21/sargy-mann-blind-painter-tim-adams
References regarding John Bramblitt
https://bramblitt.com
https://www.boredpanda.com/blind-painter-john-bramblitt/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Documentary:
https://vimeo.com/87906998
Interview "Art if transcendence":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrEFcp6A5Ig
References regarding Eşref Armağan
http://esrefarmagan.com/
https://vimeo.com/33488357
Scientific article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518845/
Article in the New Scientist:
https://esrefarmagan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/New-Scientist.pdf