Painting in the Dark: Amazing Blind Artist John Bramblitt

John Bramblitt's vivid, colorful paintings are striking enough to hang in any art gallery. But they're even more remarkable once you learn that Bramblitt completed all of the paintings without ever seeing his own canvas -- the talented artist is legally blind.

Step into 40-year-old John Bramblitt’s studio just outside of Dallas, Texas, and you’ll discover an array of vivid, beautiful oil paintings: The silhouette of an upright bass player in shades of blue, red, and black. A row of burgundy wine bottles. A close-up portrait of skateboarder Tony Hawk. A luminous cityscape of Dallas at night, rich with glowing light and color.

His work, full of emotion and somewhat reminiscent of Van Gogh, is striking enough to hang in any art gallery. But it’s even more remarkable once you learn that Bramblitt completed all of the paintings without ever seeing his own canvas – the talented artist is legally blind.

When nerve damage caused Bramblitt to lose his sight in 2001, he was angry and depressed. “I felt like any chance for me to do something new or to improve myself had gone away,” he says. He could no longer read books, and would get disoriented just walking around his own house. The familiar streets he’d walked every day were full of danger. Losing his vision was like being dropped into the middle of the ocean without a life raft.

But through his paintings, he has found a way back to shore. “Art helped me break this destructive cycle, it gave me control back, and most of all it gave me a way to express how I felt,” says Bramblitt.

Before going blind, he had never attempted to paint. So why start then?

After losing his abilities to read and write, “I needed to do something creative to let all of the images out of my head,” he says. So each day, he began painting oil on canvas, using his own special technique in which he coated the canvas with puff paint to indicate which areas he would fill in with particular colors. More than a simple hobby, it was a way for him to cope with what he had lost – and eventually, it worked.

About six months after he started painting, “a sense of calmness came over me like I had never felt before,” says Bramblitt. “I paint everyday, and so everyday I have something good to look forward to.”

For Bramblitt, his paintings also serve as a way to show the sighted world what he is capable of. “People say that ‘seeing is believing,’ and if you can’t see, then you can’t fully understand something,” he says. “I wanted to produce artwork that was obviously visual, so that people would understand that perception has little to do eyesight, that it is one’s mind that lets you understand the world.”

His artwork helps to connect him, both to the world around him and to his fellow human beings. On his website, Bramblitt claims that art “is one of the few ways that we humans can produce something that has a meaningful effect on another’s life. Art does not feed or clothe us, but it gives us a connection with our fellow man that we cannot live without.”

It also creates a link back to the visual world that he has lost – and he can show others the way. Bramblitt has led many workshops for art classes and nonprofit organizations, and the response to his teachings has been overwhelmingly positive. Even some sighted artists who are “looking for ways to develop a more emotional connection with their art,” have come to him for guidance, says Bramblitt. He also holds regular exhibitions at art galleries, both around Dallas and elsewhere – his paintings are always in high demand, and it’s not hard to see why.

“It is through painting that I most clearly experience life,” he says.

To learn more about John Bramblitt and his paintings, visit his website and watch this amazing video of the artist at work.

Originally published October 2007