Eşref Armağan (born 1953) is a Turkish painter who was born blind and grew up in a poor family with no formal education. He is known for showing that painting can be built without sight: he developed his sense of touch and spatial perception to compose works with form, perspective and colour.
He works mainly in oil. He first conceives the composition, traces the outline with a braille stylus or a rope coated in a sticky substance, applies paint with his fingers, and lets each layer dry before adding the next to avoid smudging. He needs complete silence to paint. His work has been shown in Turkey, Italy, China, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
In 2004 he was the subject of a study of human perception led by the psychologist John Kennedy of the University of Toronto. In 2008, Harvard researchers Amir Amedi and Alvaro Pascual-Leone used him as a case study on neuroplasticity, observing that his visual cortex was active while he drew. In 2009, Volvo commissioned him to paint its new S60 model before release; the painting sold on eBay for US$3,050, with proceeds going to a charity for blind people.
His legacy lies mainly in challenging assumptions about the artistic abilities of blind people and in contributing evidence to research on brain plasticity.