Blindness vs. seizures

Look closely and John Bramblitt’s paintings are simply blobs of color: mustard yellow, peach, maroon, forest green, sky blue.

Take a few steps back, though, and the colors melt together to capture people in the everyday moments of life.

A bearded man looks to the side in deep thought. A group of women joke around, playfully choking each other. A baby’s striking blue eyes stare straight at you. A sad-looking old man holds his head in his hands.

John Bramblitt paints what he sees - in his head."The world's a lot more colorful now than when I had sight," he says.

Despite creating such arresting images, Mr. Bramblitt only started painting a few years ago.
Today, painting is practically an obsession. The 35-year-old stays up late into the night to paint. He now can’t imagine life without a paintbrush.

But John Bramblitt can’t see what he’s painted.

John Bramblitt is blind.

He says the world was a dark place when he lost his vision. He was angry. Sad. Frustrated.
But he turned to painting, which calms him and makes him happy. It gives him hope. It makes the days go by faster.

And now he’s come to this realization:

“The world’s a lot more colorful now than when I had sight.”

Turning to painting

About five years ago, Mr. Bramblitt realized his sight was going away. He couldn’t make out his friends when they approached.

One day, he crossed a street as a car drove by. The car’s side mirror brushed against his shirt buttons.

He realized he needed to see a doctor.

In 2001, he was told: Your eyesight is not going to get better. You’re going to go blind.
Growing up, going blind was one of his biggest fears.

“My heart just sank,” he said. “It seemed like the entire world went away.”

Doctors haven’t been able to determine the reason for Mr. Bramblitt’s blindness. There’s no firm diagnosis, said Dr. Stephanie Helm Fleming, an optometrist who worked with Mr. Bramblitt.
But Mr. Bramblitt wanted to let others know that he still had images in his head.

“If I didn’t let them out, I was going to go crazy,” he said.

Mr. Bramblitt, who had drawn and written before going blind, kept writing. But it wasn’t the cathartic experience he was seeking.

He thought about painting. He remembered watching his mother paint when he was a boy. When she painted, she was relaxed and calm.

He figured he’d try painting for a year and see where it took him.

“Even I won’t have to see it if it’s bad,” he said.

One big hurdle: How to apply paint on canvas in the right places.

A solution: Make a raised drawing — a bumpy outline you can feel with your hands — and form a map that makes it easier to determine the boundaries of the image.

He tried glue, but it cracked. Then he discovered fabric — or puffy — paint, which leaves a raised line after it dries.

He uses oil paints because each color has its own texture. He feels the paint in his hands to help guide him to the right colors.

He also uses his hands to see the canvas, moving them along the fabric to determine the boundaries.

One recent afternoon, in his cramped artist’s studio, he painted a close-up of a face, covered with red, black, green, yellow and orange.

Mr. Bramblitt is an easy-going guy, with thick sideburns and a batch of whiskers on his chin. He calls himself a nerd and likes to read, listen to National Public Radio and science fiction on television.

But he’s intense about painting. The University of North Texas student sometimes paints until 4 or 5 a.m., wakes up a few hours later, does his homework and continues painting.

He often listens to music while he paints, from Dave Matthews to techno to heavy metal.

But it doesn’t bother him that he can’t see his paintings. He says he can probably see them better than someone who isn’t blind.

Showing off

While Mr. Bramblitt started painting for himself, he eventually showed his work to friends and family.

On their way to see their son’s painting for the first time, Deborah Bramblitt warned her husband: “‘No matter what, we have to be supportive. No matter what it looks like,’” she said.

But when she saw the painting, she was blown away. Her son had painted a self-portrait.

When his friend, Jacqi Serie, saw his paintings, she joked that she thought he was faking.

“It’s hard [for others] to wrap their heads around the fact that he can draw that well without seeing,” she said.

Soon, Mr. Bramblitt showed his paintings throughout North Texas.

A representative from the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities saw his paintings on his Web site, www.bramblitt.net. The office displayed one of his paintings — a church — on a poster designed to raise awareness about employing people with disabilities.

“We all have a collection of strengths and weaknesses and it doesn’t matter that some of them happen to be labeled as disabilities,” said Pat Pound, executive director of the governor’s disabilities committee. “It’s a matter of learning what your talents are and making the most use of them.”

Mr. Bramblitt said the attention embarrasses him — he said it’s hard to take a compliment — but it also makes him feel good.

“They might have found some hope in my paintings,” he said. “It blows me away that what I’ve done has touched people.”

Painting has helped him, too. He feels better about himself and his blindness.

Painting helps his mobility. He makes mental maps to help him walk around town and painting helps him make more vivid maps.

“He doesn’t like to be away from that easel,” Mrs. Bramblitt said. “When he’s painting, he’s seeing. I think he feels more alive.”
Into the future
Blindness hasn’t been Mr. Bramblitt’s only challenge. The El Paso native says he was about 14 when he first suffered from seizures. He believes that years of seizures stole his sight.

Mr. Bramblitt, who’s spent most of his life in North Texas, said he had a kidney removed as a kid. He’s also had pre-existing hearing loss, probably from the seizures, but it doesn’t concern him.
He attended community college after high school, but seizures kept him out of class. He ended up working on computers at a fuel injection and diesel repair shop.

But he wanted to go back to school and be an English professor. He likes English because it’s “painting with words.”

By 2000, he was attending the University of North Texas. He’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree and plans to graduate in the spring. He wants to go to graduate school at UNT next fall.

Mr. Bramblitt says he’s now used to being blind. In his dreams, he’s blind.

He hopes to get a guide dog. And he’s getting married to his friend, Ms. Serie, in March.
Ms. Serie said her future husband has taught her patience, to be humble and to make sure she doesn’t take things for granted.

Mr. Bramblitt says he’ll continue painting, even when he becomes a professor.

“I have to do it,” he said. “If I don’t, it makes life really hard for me. … If I don’t, I don’t feel I’ve done anything with my day.”

Mrs. Bramblitt picked up the paintbrush again after her son started painting. She said she wanted to be able to relate to him.

“That’s a gift he’s given back to me,” she said.

Mrs. Bramblitt said she’ll never fully accept that her son has lost his sight. She wants him to be able to see sunsets and sunrises, the moon and the stars.

But John’s positive spirit makes her feel better.

“I started coping … just by watching him live his life,” she said. “Not only does he handle it, he runs with it. He embraces it.

“I think he gets more out of life than a lot of people who see.”