The 56-year-old native of Istanbul paints vivid pictures of flowers, birds and animals. Although he does not know what they look like: he lives in darkness all his life …
… Earlier it took Esref Armagan two months to paint one painting. Now - 3-4 days: as he brags, "has mastered a new technique." Critics disagree: someone thinks that the drawings are childishly colorful and naive, someone calls them "a new word in art." In the paintings, and it is true, a real riot of colors. However, it is not the quality that attracts, but the fact: the artist Esref is blind from birth. He had never seen what he was painting in his life. All drawings are the result of visions that his unusual brain gives birth to.
Dolphin playing the violin
… Glory came to Esref when the Discovery TV made a film about him. Crowds of journalists came to his studio in crowds, vying with each other to invite the most famous universities in the world. Everyone wanted to find out what was the reason for such a miracle? Several years ago, the artist agreed to research: his brain was scanned at Harvard. The conclusion of scientists was, to put it mildly, very unexpected.
- The fact is that there is a special area in the brain, - explains Armagan. - In sighted people, he is responsible for vision. And if a person goes blind, then the brain replenishes it by building up neurons. They scanned my skull for 7 hours in a row and found out: this area in my brain is very developed, even abnormally. He kind of mutated. That is why I see things that I have never seen in reality. The brain is like my eyes. It's good enough for me to feel any object, and I immediately imagine it in my head.
Esref invites me to draw something. I agree. He has a seashell on the table. He takes it, strokes it with his fingers and draws it quickly with a pencil. For paintings, he does not use a brush - he says that in this case he does not feel the drawing.
He dips his fingers in paint and runs across the canvas using both hands. "We are a single whole with the picture, I feel it as if it were alive." Armagan's special pride: he can draw a helicopter. Once he was allowed to feel the whole car, on the take-off site.
- I tried to make drawings from the age of six, - he says. “But my parents thought it was the whim of a blind child. When I was 12, I drew a butterfly and they were surprised. They asked: who explained to you what a butterfly looks like? I replied that no one - I just see her that way. And then he drew a cat. And a cow. They stopped being surprised.
Strange, but the brain very rarely shows people to Armagan. Most often - flowers, sea, forest in the snow, various animals. Sometimes he "sees" mysterious creatures - for example, a toothy monster supposedly living in Lake Van, or a dolphin that plays … the violin.
Professor John F. Kennedy of the University of Toronto calls the Armagan case unique. “He is one in a hundred million. In my practice, it has already happened when people who became blind at the age of 10-15 could draw. But if a person in his life has not seen an object, but draws it, it is just a miracle. " Some scientists even believe that Esref has a tumor in his brain - supposedly she gave such an unusual result, "pressing" on the frontal lobes.
… I ask Esref about the hectic riot of colors in his paintings. He shrugs - any color is an empty sound to him: Armagan does not know how to tell green from red. He just knows that the sea is "blue" - when he draws, he says to the sighted assistant: "Give me blue paint." Surprisingly, Esref depicts the sea on canvas, without seeing either the sea or the canvas. It's the same with animals. The brain allows him not only to "see" the cat, but also to reliably transfer the image into the picture. There are no words.
I can touch the world with my hands
- Do you "see" people's faces if you touch them?
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- Not. For some reason it is beyond my control.
- What does your world look like?
- Close your eyes and imagine what you have not seen. A creature from Mars, for example. Then you will understand me. It is not so difficult to know the world through the imagination. I'm just a person who can touch the secrets of consciousness … touch them with his hands.
On the artist's table is a souvenir - a small copy of the Hagia Sophia: in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II rebuilt it into a mosque. He probes the dome of the building, just a few strokes with a pencil - and minarets appear on paper. Esref believes: if you teach other blind people, developing the "seeing" part of the brain, then they will "see". "Everything is possible. At first I was terribly tired when I painted a picture - my fingers trembled, but now it comes easy for me. " Strange, but Armagan has no regrets that he was born blind. “Otherwise I would be the most ordinary person. It is hard to go blind when you have already seen the world - then you know that you have lost. My wife is also blind, but she became blind at 16, and it is more difficult for her. But I know nothing else but darkness and bright images in the brain. " From his first marriage, Esref has two children: with excellent eyesight, but no craving for drawing.
… Earlier Armagan was offended that he was suspected of cheating. “People didn't even want to understand. They just said: “It can't be that a blind person draws pictures!” They didn't care that the professors were examining me, and their verdict: I am BLIND, and the University at Harvard published a book on the study of my phenomenon. Now there is no offense. They say that I am Are there any arguments? Great, this is just an advertisement for my paintings."
Can you "see", say, hatches on the pavement?
- (Laughs.) Alas, no: that's why I need a guide.
- You cannot touch the whole city with your hands - like the same Istanbul. What "sighted" part of your brain appears to be a modern metropolis?
- He flashes now gloomy, then bright colors. Fascinating. Explodes in a cascade, turns into darkness. Probably any city is like that. Maybe someday I'll draw how I "see" him. For me, a painting is a living being, it knows how to breathe.
… At the end of the conversation, Esref gives me a couple of his drawings. He hopes that his inspiration will never be lost. “Sometimes I wake up with horror and think: my visions will disappear. I will not see my worlds, I will no longer be able to dip my fingers in paint. Blinded a second time, but only in the brain. How will I live without flowers, cats and dolphins? But then I calm down. I have a lot to do. You remember - I have to draw the whole city …"
