As a child, John Bramblitt grew up obsessed with drawing, saying he could do it before he could walk. But he also had series of health setbacks, including severe epilepsy and kidney problems.
"But I did art every day,” he said. “If it was a bad day, art would take me out of that bad day. But if was having a good day, art is a way to celebrate a good day. I drew every day.”
By the time he was in college, Bramblitt could draw house blueprints, cartooning, and portraits. But he didn’t paint.
More than 20 years ago, all hopes of a life of creativity seemingly was lost. He was having terrible seizures, due in part to Lyme disease that had been undiagnosed up to that point.
Those seizes cost Bramblitt about 40-percent of his hearing- and all his vision. “I thought my life was just completely over, and art was just taken away.”
The first efforts to end his despair was at the University of North Texas. He thought he would have to leave school, but its office of disability helped him re-learn everything, from how to read and write, cook, and to get around, and help him through the depression.
“In painting, there’s a term called churrasco, where the darkness pushes you to the light," he explained. "You can almost think of an actor on a really dark stage, but there’s a single spotlight on the actor. And in that darkness that I was in, the light was cane training.”
Bramblitt began to travel independently, with his hands doing the work his eyes used to, within a year, walking from his apartment to the university.
That route –learning to follow the proper streets – made him think of the lines on drawings he used to do, using paint that he could touch and feel, then working with colors that he could identify through touch.
“I honestly thought I was crazy- out of my mind,” he explained. “But I started to use paint that I could touch and feel (that was originally really thick)– and started working with colors that I could touch.”
Bramblitt does original paintings and portraits - as well as murals. It starts with a drawing on canvas, then he’ll get the right dimensions for that wall, along with learning if that space has windows or cracks he should be aware of ahead of time. Always feeling for those lines, feeling for the different colors to know where he’s at.
Bramblitt says he’s developed a wide palette.
“Whenever I feel the really thick paint, it’s got to be white, it’s the only paint that feels like that.” (which can feel like toothpaste) “The runny stuff is black, and if I want it gray, I can just mix for the texture – the viscosity that’s right between the two. It gives me a way to control color just through touch.”
The development of colors for murals has to be little more precise, creating ‘recipes’ that will stand up in the weather. His latest work is a mural on the Williamson Road overpass by Roanoke's Taubman Museum of Art, where he's leading a free workshop Saturday.
“We live in a time when everyone has a cell phone with a camera in their pocket. But the wonderful thing about painting – is that you’re just telling a story, you’re communicating. It’s one idea from one person,” he said. “And they’re trying to share it with other people. That’s really what art is.”
