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#3898 - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Paintings and writings by John Bramblitt.
http://www.bramblitt.net/gallery.htm
The following was sent to Nonduality Salon:
This is a short documentary about John
Bramblitt, a painter who is blind.
It's worth a look in that there are some enlightening things he
has to say
about perception.
http://www.bramblitt.net/documentary.htm
Artist Statement
Perceptions
This series is a challenge to what perception truly is. Vision
has been
equated with "knowing" even though it is nothing more
than a chemical
response to the light that passes through the lens of the eye.
Vision at
best is a second hand way of knowing the world; all that can be
perceived is
light that has been reflected off of objects. When people look at
an image
reflected in a mirror they do not feel that the reflection is
real, yet when
it is reflected by the "mirrors" in one's own eye that
image is deemed
reality.
Plato spoke of a cave where images were displayed on the back
wall, but
these images were only representation of the "real"
world and those that
believed that these images were real would never have a true
understanding
of the actual world they lived in. For Plato the world of the
real existed
outside of the cave; outside of the eye.
"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he
sees, but what
he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen." -
Pablo Picasso
Our misunderstanding about perception is ingrained so deeply that
it colors
much of our language.
For instance, we say "I see" when what we really mean
is that that we
understand something. Someone is called "blind" when
they lack
understanding - blind to the truth or blind to some fact which
others see as
obvious. Look in almost any dictionary and you find synonyms for
blindness
that include words like: unknowing, unquestioning, careless,
heedless,
ignorant, imperceptive, inattentive, inconsiderate,
indiscriminate,
injudicious, insensitive, neglectful, oblivious, thoughtless,
unaware,
unconscious, undiscerning, unmindful, unobservant, unreasoning.
it goes on
and on.
Clearly this is not reality but rather one of those shadowy
images that is
cast upon the cave wall. What then is reality? What is
Perception?
My series is an effort to answer these questions; not in words
but in paint
and canvas - by using images to understand perception. The masked
man on TV
and in the movies hides his identity by covering his eyes, and
through this
simple act hides all that he is. The identities of villains and
even
fictitious heroes such as Spiderman and Batman all fade into
oblivion purely
by covering their eyes. My paintings focus on the eyes and the
very area
that a mask would cover thereby "unmasking" the subject
of the painting
giving no place for the emotions and the truth of the person to
hide. You
look at my paintings, but very often they look back.
http://www.bramblitt.net/gallery.htm
