Sagi Mann: Painting Beyond Blindness

Sagi Mann, a blind painter, reinvented painting after losing his sight, creating impactful and individual artworks, valued at around £50,000.

### Sargy Mann: Painting Through Total Blindness
* 🎨 Sargy Mann, a blind painter from North Suffolk, has been registered blind for 25 years and aims to create paintings as **visual metaphors for his experience of reality**.
* 👁 In the early '70s, Mann developed **cataracts in both eyes**, followed by **retinal detachments in late '79 or '80**, leading to **total blindness**.
* 🔵 Despite the initial belief that painting after total blindness was impossible, Mann discovered he could still paint by **feeling the canvas and using tactile markers to create standing figures**.
* 🌟 Mann's unique and impactful paintings have been exhibited in galleries, with notable collectors including **Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Bruce Springsteen**.
* 💰 The prices of Mann's paintings have reached around **£50,000**, and his works are described as **edgy, dangerous, and full of impact through color**.
* 💪 Mann believes that by being determined to **continue painting and making his own experience the subject**, he can reinvent painting for himself, even in **total blindness**.

my name is Sagi man, and I'm a painter. I now live in a little town in North Suffolk with my wife, Francis. For 25 years, I've been registered blind. My desire has always been to make paintings, to make visual metaphors for my experience of reality. In the early '70s, when I was 34-35, I got cataracts in both my eyes. Then, in late '79 or '80, I had a retinal detachment in my right eye, and then my left retina detached. With each operation, my sight was getting worse and worse until an area on my cornea perforated, and the eye sort of exploded. That was the total blindness which I had been trying to prepare myself for for years. The idea of painting when you were totally blind seemed a nonsense to me. And so, when I came back from the Hospital, I remember standing in my studio and thinking, you know, now what? I thought, well, I've got this canvas stretched, ready to go, and I've got all this paint.

and my brushes, and I thought, I wonder what would happen if I give that a go. So I brushed ultramarine up there where the sky was, and I had the most extraordinary sensation. I saw the canvas go blue. I painted for about an hour, and then my daughter was sort of walking by, and she said, God, Dad, that's beautiful. So I thought, Well, there you go. There is painting after blindness. And I've been doing it ever since. Pre-total blindness, I would say I was a landscape painter, and as I got blinder, figures at touch in distance became more important. Now, what I had from painting previous paintings with standing figures in was this cardboard tube. It's the height of my wife, and that bit of blue tack marks her chin, that marks her waist, that marks her knees, and I then mark down this standing figure on my canvas, the different heights which correspond to those positions. So I begin to build up a drawing in blue Tac. Okay, now the first thing is to find myself. Now, the thing about these bits of

blue Tac, of course, is that what they are actually is coordinates. They're not all the same size, and that helps me to find myself cuz certain places I put bigger. [Music] bits. Well, I'm Christopher Beress, and this is Kagan Contemporary Art Gallery in London. And on the wall at the minute, we have paintings by Sagi Mann. Since he lost his sight, we have had three exhibitions of his work, and they've all been wonderful. We have a lot of really well-known collectors who have his work, extraordinary people like Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis. Bruce Springsteen was in the gallery last week. Beyond that, we obviously have major serious art collectors who collect Sagi. This painting is actually now sold, and I suppose prices of this size of painting is now around the area of about £50,000. They're not cozy little conventional paintings. They are edgy, dangerous. They tell stories that they're full of impact through color. I think they're very individual. It is astonishing, and I can't

really fathom it. And he is brilliant. I have to sort of reinvent painting for myself. It seems sort of more or less impossible. But if you're just determined to keep going, you know you don't need to give up. Because if your subject is your own experience, then as long as you're having an experience, you've got a subject. And that has turned out to be true even into total [Music] blindness.

Blind painter Sargy Mann: Painting with inner vision - BBC News

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BBC News

Sagi Man, a painter living in North Suffolk, has been registered blind for 25 years but continues to create paintings as visual metaphors for his reality.

After experiencing total blindness, he discovered that he could still paint and has been using a cardboard tube and blue tack to create touchable standing figures in his artwork.

His focus has shifted from landscape painting to incorporating figures at a touchable distance as his sight has deteriorated.

Sagi Mann's paintings, displayed at the Kagan Contemporary Art Gallery in London, have attracted renowned collectors like Steven Spielberg and Bruce Springsteen.

Despite losing his sight, Mann's edgy and impactful artworks are selling for around £50,000 each, known for their unconventional and dangerous storytelling through color.

The coordinates of the paintings vary in size, adding to their individual and impactful nature, with a focus on larger pieces for certain locations.

Reinventing Painting: A Determined Artist's Journey

An artist is determined to reinvent painting for himself, even in the face of challenges.

He believes that as long as he has experiences, he will always have a subject for his art, even through total blindness.