Eşref Armağan (b.1954) is a visual artist native to Turkey. He currently resides in Ankara with his wife Nilufer; together they have two children. In spite of being born completely blind, he creates elaborate paintings and drawings that surprise both sighted viewers and blind individuals. The secret behind Eşref’s seemingly impossible mastery of a visually-oriented skill is his sense of touch, his main organ of vision. As a young child, his father cultivated his artistic talents. Eşref’s would tactically explore nature and a variety of objects that he would then draw. He started out using rudimentary materials, cardboard and a nail, to carve lines that he could touch as he drew.
When Eşref drew a wooden butterfly that his father gifted him with, he decided to give it some color so he devised a method of memorizing colored pencils by position. Eşref then continued to hone his artistic skills, learning perspective and how to convey light and shadow amazingly without ever having physically observed these visual concepts.
Eşref never draws lines, instead gluing down thread onto his canvases, so that he can feel the surface. He then paints section by section, being careful to let his paint dry before moving onto the next. Eşref mixes his colors himself, and paints exclusively with his fingers. His paintings range from picturesque nature scenes, to portraits, to imagined compositions such as two sunflowers facing each other under moonlight. He claims that he cannot paint abstractly, because the concept is difficult for him to grasp, yet viewers of his work say he has a uniquely expressive style.
Art was Eşref’s passion, but he struggled to make a successful living from his paintings. When his father died in the late 80’s, Eşref was devastated, and destitute. In 1994, an introduction to talent manager Joan Eroncel would change his life profoundly when she was asked to accompany him at a Czech art festival for the visually impaired. They decided to work together, and Joan exposed the US to Esref’s work. The rest of the world quickly discovered his talents, and he has since been an inspiration for all who encounter him at exhibitions, interviews, and talks.
In 2008, Harvard Medical School scanned Eşref’s brain to view his neurological activity as he creates art. The case study revealed that he showed activity in the fronto-parietal regions while drawing, which also occurs in sighted artists. Eşref’s occipital cortex, a region of the brain responsible for visual perception, was also active, suggesting that this region of Eşref’s brain has taken on the role of facilitating his drawing and painting skills. His ability to feel an object with his hands and then translate it into a two-dimensional image is promising evidence that this kind of cross-modulatory function exists in other individuals.
Now a revered artist, Eşref continues to create beautiful paintings and drawings but has found enjoyment in showing other blind people that they can draw and paint as he does. Eşref provides basic drawing tutorials to blind adults and children, who gain a newfound confidence in an artistic realm they never thought was possible.