[Nfb-idaho] FYI FOR THE PAINTERS AMONG US, ONE PERSPECTIVE

[Brett Winches]

This does not necessarily represent my personal opinion nor that of the
sponsor of this list.  


Ever think that you can not do anything because you are blind?
 Can you imagine painting with low vision? How about with no vision?
 How about being born with no eyes at all? Check out this article below.








Esref Armagan - "The Blind Painter"






The Superhuman and Quest:





 Esref Armagan, of Ankara, Turkey, is a 53 year old blind painter.
 Blind since birth, Armagan is a gifted visual artist who can draw and
paint in three dimensions; drawing comparisons to Renaissance architect
Filippo Brunelleschi, the first artist to master three point
perspective. Armagan paints houses, boats, birds and butterflies, even
though he has never actually seen any of these things. He paints with
lively colours and has even learned to draw in perspective, yet his
brain has never detected hue, light or shadow. Over the years, Armagan
developed his own methods for creating his artwork and no one has taught
him or described what techniques to use. He started with pencil and
paper, and by 18 he was painting with his fingers, first on paper, then
on canvas with oils. Nowadays, he works primarily with fast-drying
acrylics. After displaying his work at more than 20 exhibitions in
Turkey, Holland, the Czech Republic and China, Armagan's disarmingly
realistic work and his abilities have revolutionized our knowledge of
how much congenitally blind people can understand about the layout of
space. Dr. John Kennedy, a psychologist and Director of Life Sciences at
the University of Toronto, researches the psychology of perception and
cognition in both sighted and blind people. He put Armagan through a
battery of tests in which he successfully drew a series of solid
objects, including a cube, in three-point perspective. Further tests, at
Harvard University's Neuroscience laboratory, tested Armagan while
drawing and revealed that as he drew his visual cortex was not lying
dormant - it had been recruited by his other senses and lit up as though
he was seeing. For the ultimate challenge, Dr. Kennedy takes Armagan to
Italy to recreate Brunelleschi's perspective masterpiece - the
Baptistery in Florence.

Portent: For centuries, it was held that the brain was a fixed entity
and hard-wired for each independent function, incapable of adapting
itself after injury. Armagan's story has revealed that the brain has the
potential to adapt and rewire itself according to individual needs. The
brain's ability to reorganize its functions based on new information and
experiences is defined as neural plasticity. Dozens of medical therapies
have been developed as a result of breakthroughs in thinking about
plasticity - specifically strokes, autism, schizophrenia, spinal cord
injuries, epilepsy, chronic pain and many other previously "untreatable"
conditions. The next steps lie in learning enough about plasticity to
harness it for individual needs. But in the next stage of our evolution,
when we have the technology to program human life and fix any
identifiable defects, would people like Armagan be eliminated before
they are even born? While most people acknowledge the differences
between coercive and elective forms of eugenics, will there be room in
this future world for those of us who are considered "genetically
unfit?" In this vision of the future, we must look not only at what we
will gain, but also at what might be lost.