Functionally Blind and Differentiating Between Sunlight & Darkness

It’s easy to imagine blindness as a crippling disability that would end a visual artist’s career, but in John Bramblitt’s case, his blindness was actually what sparked his career as an artist. Bramblitt began to paint in 2001, when he lost his sight due to epilepsy.

Bramblitt is “functionally blind,” which means that his eyes can only differentiate between sunlight and darkness. Despite this, he has developed a novel way to paint – by using textured paints to feel his way around the canvas. “Basically what I do is replace everything that the eyes would do for a sighted artist with the sense of touch,” he writes on his website. “The raised lines take care of finding your placement on the canvas.“

He also has an interesting solution for color; “All of the bottles and paint tubes in my studio are Brailled, and when mixing colors I use recipes. In other words I will measure out different portions of each color that I need to produce the right hue. This is no different than using a recipe to bake a cake.“

John Bramblitt (born 1971) is a blind painter of American origin. He is ranked as the #1 blind painter in the world and is currently the only blind muralist in the world ^[1] with murals in New York and Dallas ^[2]. Bramblitt is known for his bright colors and a style that is a mixture of Impressionism combined with the modern feel of Pop art.