The Blind Can See T T-Shirt

The Blind Can See T

2008 Copyright. All Rights Reserved to Mariam Muradian.

This painting was directly inspired by one of the visions I had in the Native American “Deeksha” Healing/Blessing on New Year’s Eve. My eyes were closed.
I saw penetrating yellow light pouring and radiating out from behind my eyes. I was able to see things in a “Maxfield Parrish way” again. Now consider from whence I have come…..

August 2006 I was given a drug to assist my heart; helping to end 40 years of continual “heart attack magnitude” chest pain and to keep me from slipping in and out of consciousness. It was a new, still somewhat experimental, drug on the market….aka “expensive”.

In January 2007, after my 13th heart surgery, the drug was increased to get me past a difficult recovery. I began having elevating pressures in my eyes and pain like knives inside my eyes. Very rapidly I lost my peripheral vision, my color vision, and my central vision. My eyes had become extremely light sensitive; I was given the darkest glasses. This was in the middle of painting The Genetic Bill of Rights Painting Series. I had to sort my colored paints into shades of grey (which I fell into quite naturally from my formal art training); I continued to paint in color even though I could not tell you what color it was, apart from some incredibly intuitive color vibrations I would get; sometimes I could even hear the color. The signature piece of that series was painted when I had only a sliver of vision remaining in my left eye.
Because I had so little sensitive vision left, the Blind Society deemed it unreliable and trained me blindfolded. I painted the signature piece 80% blindfolded. It was a beyond trippy time for me!!!

During this whole loss of vision, I had the Blind Society coming to my home to train me in skills and navigation. I was taught to use a blind cane. I learned to type and use voice recognition software. I was learning to cook by sound. One day I set out to get the mail: I was gone for two hours, had fallen into a bush, and returned with no mail in hand! I was so overwhelmed and challenged.

After much painful testing, it was decided that the new drug was the cause of the blindness. I was left with a lousy choice and no guarantees from the medical community.

In October 2007, I found myself a long way from home, down a road that I didn’t like nor was I sure I could reverse, go back to the fork in the road, and choose again. Morphine and the runaway bobsled to hell! So I stopped the drug! I began Chinese Tong Ren.
Miraculously, my sight returned, color too! My peripheral is still not as it was before the drug…..whose complaining?!!! Painting is like candy to me now; I was born with the gift, but now it means even more! My mind and soul are still playing catch up with all that happened. I do not understand the “taking” or the “giving back” of it all…..maybe it is for the comfort of others? I suppose the worst way to come away from such a trial would be with a “metaphorically myopic soul”? (I would like to hear your comments on my last statement, please. Write.)

What we see can be such a distracting illusion to the essence of what is really there. Oddly, sometimes I miss the darkness. I remember the lessons of the darkness. As my Father would say, “I have made the circumference.”
Gratitude does not even begin to cover it!....

~Mariam Muradian

Available for sale as

T-Shirts