A feel for painting
Blind Denton artist uses memory and touch
By Terry Lee Goodrich
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

DENTON - John Bramblitt's world began to shrink four years ago, when he noticed friends' faces becoming blurrier.
At first he shrugged it off. After all, Bramblitt, now 34, had worn glasses since he was 11. But his eyesight declined to legal blindness -- and worse. Now he barely perceives light and uses a cane to find his way.
But it wasn't until he could no longer see vivid images that he decided to capture them in oil on canvas.
"I got more and more angry because I felt everything was on hold," said Bramblitt, of Denton, a senior English major at the University of North Texas. "I didn't leave the apartment much; I couldn't read. I kept going to school, but I was getting incompletes. "I thought, 'Art isn't going to be another thing I can't do.' "
The blue-eyed man put aside the question of why he became blind -- doctors still don't know -- to concentrate on a different issue: How to create.
Bramblitt found a way, using touch and visual memories, to teach himself to paint. He recently sold his first painting, a portrait of a blues musician, for $650. A solo exhibition of his works will open Monday at the University of North Texas.
Back when he could see, he had sketched idly, then tossed the drawings. But he wanted to try again, this time to fill the void in his life.
First he found a way other than vision to visualize.
On a trip to Mexico with friends about a year ago, the El Paso native was struck by the serenity of a stranger he met. Bramblitt asked an unusual question: Could he explore the man's face with his hands? The stranger said yes.
At a Denton nightclub, Bramblitt asked the same question of Pops Carter, 86, a Denton blues musician whose music he likes. Carter agreed.
"I wasn't doin' nothin'," Carter said. "I was standing right there on break. It didn't tickle."
At home, Bramblitt's fluffy little dog, Ann -- part papillon, part Chihuahua -- was an even easier subject. The image of Ann, 10 years old, was already etched into Bramblitt's memory, and he did not need to ask permission to touch her to refresh it. Besides, Ann held no grudges from the day he fumbled for the remote control and accidentally bopped her with it.
Scrutinies done, it was time for Bramblitt to convey his feelings -- tactile and emotional.
"I painted many paintings in my mind, stroke for stroke, before I ever bought a brush," he said.

Patterns on canvas
Next he experimented to find a substance he could use to make raised outlines, patterns to follow for the impressions tucked into his mind.
Glue took too long to dry; correction fluid seeped into the canvas. But a fast-drying fabric paint works well.
When it comes time to bring an image to life with color, touch helps again. He cannot read labels identifying hues of oil paints, so friends helped at first. Then he began to recognize textures, enabling him to blend colors and paint more rapidly. Black is slicker than white; burnt sienna is like jelly. And aquamarine glides onto the canvas after it has been mixed with white.
"Then I just try to remember how light and shadow were," he said.
He also draws from his past. He started college after graduating from Marcus High School in Flower Mound but took several years off from college because he has a seizure disorder that often left him weak. As he tried various medicines to control the seizures, he worked as an office manager for his father's diesel injection shop in Lewisville.
He resumed college and was awarded a fellowship. He made the dean's list and -- even better -- the president's list for his 4.0 grade-point average before his vision deteriorated.
For the past two years, he has painted rodeos and nudes. Churches and billiard players. Wine bottles and his girlfriend. Even a disturbing self-portrait depicting his frustration at sinking into darkness.
At first he was hesitant to let others see an in-progress image, but now he turns to girlfriend Jacqi Serie -- he calls her "Gorgeous" -- and others for feedback.
"John has definitely evolved into a more receptive artist," said Serie, who has a degree in art photography and is a wedding photographer. The two began dating two years ago, when Bramblitt's sight was virtually gone. He enlarged a photo of her, hoping to see what she looks like, but the image was obscure.
"I admire his ability to capture something realistically, even if he can't see it, but also put his own twist on it," she said. "I'm honest with him if I think something is a little awkward, and he's never gotten upset.
"Sometimes, he's like, 'Well, yeah' and will rework it," Serie said. "Other times he says: 'I like it. I'll leave it.' "
Bramblitt jokes that if he is a terrible painter, at least he will never have to look at his art.

Making connections
But he also does not believe that "bad art" exists.
"Art is expression. Liking one person's art over another doesn't mean that the art is any better or worse," he said. "But I don't like it when people don't feel one way or another. At least, even if they don't like it, they're connecting in some way with the artist."
Bramblitt said he is encouraged by knowing that other artists have wrestled with impaired vision, including them Claude Monet and Edgar Degas.
Some painters turn to other media, such as sculpture, as they begin to lose their sight, said Vickie Collins, vice president of National Exhibits by Blind Artists, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization that holds juried exhibits.
Some use extremely bright colors and a large canvas to compensate; many use magnifiers, she said.
And some, like Bramblitt, begin when they no longer see.
Whatever their stories, "our artists want to be able to stand on their own," Collins said.
Bramblitt recently made his first sale, the portrait of bluesman Carter, for $650 to Tim Trawick, owner of the Texas Jive bar and restaurant in Denton, Bramblitt said.
"I'm a big fan of Pops, and John's been in my club a number of times," Trawick said. "I knew John was blind, but I didn't know he was a painter."
Trawick was captivated when he saw Carter's likeness at one of the bar's sporadic art exhibits.
"I thought, 'That's incredible,' " he said. "Then I found out John had done it. That put it over the top -- that he did it from feeling Pops' face and features and that he did it so well."
Carter was equally impressed. A friend gave him a printout of his portrait from Bramblitt's Web site, and Carter hung it on his living-room wall near an autographed photo of B.B. King.
"Boy oh boy. That painting is amazing -- it's me," he said.
Several of Bramblitt's paintings have been chosen by the art faculty and staff for a solo exhibit at the Union Gallery at the University of North Texas, said Carol Wilkinson, manager of the university's Design Works.
One who looks at Bramblitt's art from a clinical standpoint is an optometrist, Stephanie Fleming of Dallas, a specialist in low vision.
She began testing Bramblitt extensively two years ago.
"I'm not an art critic, but I was really appreciative of how realistic things were from his visual memory," she said.
The cause of his blindness remains a mystery, she said.
"Sometimes there's just no answer," Fleming said. "I'm very surprised at how well he's handled it. He's been very upbeat."
Bramblitt has his blue times.
"Eyes are so hard to paint," he said. "Before, people's eyes told so much. That was the first thing I always looked at."
But he is determined his world will not shrink again.
So he taps his way along Denton sidewalks, avoiding sidewalk cracks and sidestepping trash bins that protrude.
He has completed more than a year of mobility training, even navigating his way through downtown Dallas and Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington. He looks forward to getting a guide dog eventually -- a Lab, perhaps, or a boxer -- although Ann will never slip in his affection, he said.
Using a computer program with a scanner and an automated voice, he can read again. His grades have improved, he plans to graduate in May, head on to graduate school, become an English professor -- and paint.
"For a while when I started painting, it was almost as if I was trying to throw my blindness back in God's face," he said. "I feel a lot calmer now, a lot better. It's become like maybe it was God's plan.
"I don't want to stop."