[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Esref Armagon

[Lisa Yayla]

Article excerpt from the Turkish Daily News
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=72370
Colors of darkness
Saturday, May 5, 2007

Esref Armagan, a Turkish painter, has been blind since his birth. He has 
never seen the green of a tree, the red of a rose or the blue of the 
sky. He has always wondered what the world looks like and has learned it 
through the paintings he himself created. “I see now. Painting has shown 
me the world,” says Armagan.

ISTANBUL – Tempo Magazine

Mr. Armag(gan, 54, does not use a brush while he is painting. He touches 
and feels the nature and reflects it to the canvas by using his fingers. 
Armagan has been painting since the age of 12. He is the winner of 
numerous awards both in Turkey and abroad, including the United States, 
China and Europe. An American friend of Armagan, Joan Eroncel, 
introduced him to the world. Eroncel, whom Armagan met in 1994, says 
that he is a genius. “The only Turkish painter whose pieces are 
exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum in New 
York is Esref Armagan. He is the pride of Turkey.”

Armag(an has no academic qualification in arts. However, he can draw 
famous architectural artworks from different perspectives. We admired 
his ”finger prints” on the canvas.

Married with two children, Armagan is living in Ankara. Blind from the 
birth, Armag(an became curious about his environment at the age of 
six. “For instance,” he says, “I thought watermelons grow on trees, but 
they are on the ground.” He learned the names and colors of everything 
in the environment and memorized them. “I had the freedom to examine 
objects in my hand,” added Armag(an.

“When we were together with friends, I asked them to describe the 
scenery for me.” At the age of 12-13, Armag(an thought, “I wonder if I 
can draw everything that I have asked about?” then he examined reliefs, 
learned the shapes of houses, mountains and trees. “I placed cardboard 
under the photographs in newspapers and asked people to use a hard 
pencil and draw them for me. After I checked them with my fingers, my 
brain started to sense them. I learned all colors and shapes and 
memorized them.”

When Armag(an was 12, he started by drawing by pencil. His first drawing 
was a butterfly. Later he switched to oil painting. However, he did not 
use brushes. “If you are blind you do not understand if you are dipping 
the brush in the paint or if it has enough paint on, or if you paint the 
canvas. So, I started painting by my fingers. I have never seen the 
colors but I learned to use them,” Armag(an explained...................


.............On the footsteps of Brunelleschi – with no vision

They took me to a square in Italy. Professor Kennedy from Harvard was 
there too. We were standing in front of the artwork of the Italian 
architect Filippo Brunelleschi who lived 600 years ago and invented the 
three-way perspective. They gave me five minutes to examine the model of 
the building. Then, they told me, “You will draw an image of this piece 
by viewing from the front, the rear and from the top,” described 
Armag(an. After I drew the three-perspective piece, I heard Professor 
Kennedy crying. He said, “Today is a historic day. Brunelleschi drew the 
three-way perspective for the first time 600 years ago. The first man 
with no vision drawing with the same perspective is Es,ref Armag(an.”