Eşref Armağan is a visually impaired painter born in Istanbul in 1953. Despite being blind from birth, Armağan has focused his life on art, overcoming his disability and becoming a globally recognized artist through his works. With a unique creative process, he has developed his painting skills and achieved significant success, demonstrating how determination and imagination can defy limitations. In his art, he invites people into a different world by blending his observations with his vivid imagination. His work exemplifies how creative power can emerge regardless of obstacles.
Early Life and Education
Eşref Armağan discovered his passion for art at a very young age. He began to realize his blindness around the ages of four or five. As a child, his curiosity about the world he had never seen grew, and he sought to understand everything he touched by asking sighted individuals to describe it. He learned about certain objects through embossed illustrations, feeling the models with his hands and replicating them onto paper. During this period, his greatest support came from his father. At the age of twelve, when he wanted to draw a butterfly, his father gave him a cut-out butterfly from a book. Armağan memorized the colors one by one and began to paint.
Artwork by Eşref Armağan (Photo: gzt)
By the age of eighteen, he started creating works not only by drawing with his fingers on paper but also by using oil paints on cardboard. Over time, he transitioned from oil paints to acrylics and began painting on canvas. Using his hands as his eyes, he advanced his artistic skills. Despite receiving no formal education in art, he learned about the world through his father’s descriptions. Armağan relied on his tactile perceptions to comprehend the visual world and developed a unique painting style through mental visualization.
Artistic Career and Works
Eşref Armağan has participated in numerous exhibitions over the years, becoming an internationally acclaimed artist whose talent has been the subject of documentaries. His paintings adopt a figurative style, characterized by vibrant colors and intricate compositions. He organizes paint tubes in a specific order while working on his pieces. He often starts with dark colors and lightens them using white. To create light and shadow effects, he applies suggestions from others, blending light and dark tones into his artworks. Believing that darkness is black and light is white, Armağan uses both his hands and brushes as needed when painting. His art represents an inner journey, employing a creation process that relies not on vision but on the power of touch and the mind.
Artwork by Eşref Armağan (Photo: gzt)
Armağan was invited by Harvard University to study his drawing techniques. During this research, he was placed in an MRI machine to examine his visual cortex and brain functions. He was given over 20 different objects, each of which he explored for 18 seconds through touch before drawing them. Upon completing his drawings, neuroscientists observed that the visual cortex in his brain became active when he touched an object. This study scientifically confirmed that his fingertips function almost like a vision system.
Eşref Armağan draws the National Combat Aircraft KAAN (Video: Turkish Aerospace)
Contributions and Achievements
Eşref Armağan’s art is notable not only for his personal accomplishments but also for his societal contributions. He has worked to enhance opportunities for visually impaired individuals to participate in the art world, encouraging them to realize their creative potential. He advocates that disability does not limit creativity but can, in some cases, liberate it. The artist has participated in numerous projects to promote the inclusion of disabled individuals in art and society, inspiring others through his experiences.
