What color are your eyes?
Manabi Province, Ecuador — Today a precious young lad greeted me at his family’s gates, and after a 15-second introduction, he exclaimed, ‘You have the eyes of a cat!’ – much more amusing to hear in his own voice and native language when he blurted: “Ojos de gato!”
As I adjusted to his high-octane energy – and his mother’s expanded introduction/apology by saying that they sometimes call him, ‘Tarzan,’ I thought of my eyes and what he must be seeing.
Yet.
After at least 40 years of beginning my day by putting in the corrective lenses/contacts, I can no more tell you or draw/paint what my eyes look like, than a stranger’s. There are times when I peer at my eyes while putting in the lenses, and I think, ‘Yes, my eyes do have unique colors…’ and sometimes those colors change. One day hazel; one day more green; another day more green with blue. But draw them or paint them or be able to know what others see – not a clue, unless I peer into the mirror and silently analyze what I see while looking at my eyes. Walk away, and the image vanishes. Close my eyes, the image vanishes, even four inches away from the mirror. Open eyes, the image is clear. Close eyes, the image vanishes. Black screen.
About a year ago out of idle curiosity, I followed a link about aphantasia. ‘What in the world is that?’ I wondered.
A few minutes into the description, I was dumbfounded. I was reading that most people can visualize things in their ‘mind’s eye.’
What? “Mind’s eye” is something real? Not a figment of speech? People can really ‘see’ things in the blank canvas of their mind’s eye when they close their eyes?
I see nothing. Dark. Nada and and assumed that everyone else saw nothing as well.
One often-used test is to ask people to visualize a red apple on a white plate. And maybe seeing someone cut that apple with a knife and expose the interior. Or visualize a sunset, and palm trees… an ocean. Maybe sea gulls over an idyllic scene.
For me, yes you understand – I see nothing.
It’s called ‘aphantasia.’
Oddly, many artists have this same ‘challenge,’ yet only recently are people realizing that there are many ways that people see – and process information.
For the past year I have attempted to analyze exactly how I process information for my art. For a long time I have shared with people that in order to remember a certain color, I talk my way through with narratives like this: “Start with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, mix one tablespoon of mustard, and a dash of soy sauce, and that’s the color of yellow for the petals of this flower…”
The byline on this blog is, “An artist’s eyes never rest…” and it’s as if a background computer is always at work, looking, processing, breaking things down into lines and geometry, analyzing how I would draw this or that, matching random colors and connecting those colors, all running in the background as I go through each day.
Then one day I realized – after reading about aphantasia – that some people can see an image or landscape, and it’s recorded as in a photograph? I still find that hard to believe, but it must be true. If so, I wondered, couldn’t all of those people have an easy ability to draw – if the image is ‘right there’ to see?
When I veer from my day’s tasks and read more about aphantasia, there are always new layers. In fact, one link led to a connection to the inability to remember names or – ahem, learn a second language. Down the rabbit hole we go!
I try to read with a neutral attitude, absorbing what is presented, digesting it, and eventually deciding what is ‘verdad’ and what is gray. I find myself asking, ‘This is a joke. People can REALLY see these things when prompted to imagine them?”
Could you make a snowman from this snow? 2012 Photo by Karen Koen, Little Rock, Arkansas USA
A snowman with a bright orange carrot and a sky-blue scarf and charcoal eyes? I immediately think about how I would draw it. Big circle, medium circle, go to the refrigerator and find a carrot, etc. But imagine a snowman? Nope. Blank page until I start scribbling with thoughts.
Heba Azmy discusses this topic in a new TedTalk:
For today I will stop with that and see how many of you might have a little or a lot of this inability to visualize – or if you’re like my friend Andres who has the total opposite. He, a master of languages, of data, of information – a walking encyclopedia – has almost a photographic memory and sees things in clear detail.
After getting your feedback I will write again and explain how I process visual information in greater detail than using mayonnaise and mustard and soy sauce!
Thanks in advance for sharing what you do or do not see when you close your eyes and visualize that snowman!
Zeebra Designs & Destinations 
Dear Lisa,I was made aware of aphantasia over 40 years ago in a workshop I was taking. “Close your eyes, see your car. What color is it? Now take a paint brush and start at the front and paint it red.”I could do it easily as could most participants in the room, and I found it difficult to believe that some could not do that ‘simple’ exercise. It has been a helpful perspective in counseling to realize that we all don’t perceive or process experiences the same, and how important it is to honor another’s experience as what’s so for them. Thank you Lisa for giving a name to this phenomenon. I like to imagine that your having aphantasia is part of your Gift as a brilliant artist!Christen
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” ~John Wesley~
Christen Lynn 802-696-2162 Cell & WhatsApp802-659-4174 Skype with Voice Mail
Dear ChrisTEN!
Thank you so much for your comment, and for sharing your own ‘baffled’ confusion from the opposite side of this gift of visualization. I loved, however, your closing quote by John Wesley – not only great food for thought and advice, but with great syntax as well. Of course you would share something as beautiful as that quote!
Thank you! Love, Lisa
Yes- I can visualize a snowman, but more than that I think how I’d make it; how the snow would feel as I gather it whether it is warm/wet enough to pack together and how I’d roll it up to make the bottom ball. Haven’t read the article yet but very interested to do so. I am totally left brain, not great with imagining 3-D spacial, but numbers stick in my head-only takes a few runs of writing it and I’ve memorized my new credit card #- and I feel I am pretty good at hearing and imitating accents of other languages and at learning them, tho not at understanding the audio coming in from spanish speakers. Some of these things must be located on one side of our brains.
Your post is fascinating and your description of what you are figuring out your brain is doing/not doing is thought provoking but fun as all of us who read your blog begin to investigate our own ways of perceiving! I don’t think I’ve ever not learned something new from your posts- love you!
Dear Lee! What a surprise to see your reply that reflects your introspective views of how you process incoming information. The maths were my strengths, and is makes sense how one uses that gift to analyze and organize the input. Understanding the audio ‘coming in’ is a challenge of mine as well, especially if more than one person is talking at the same time. It turns to a mescla of loud white noise that makes me feel a bit ill. If they write down what I am not understanding, there is this ‘eureka! THAT is what they’re saying’ – and we celebrate that I learned one new word for the day – but it’s a true challenge to separate the input and make sense of it. Thankfully I’ve learned to make sense of the visual input and cherish breaking it all down with pencil or brush.
Your final sentence – how humbling. Thank you, dear friend.
Lisa, this is very interesting. Those eyes are the windows into our soul. I have long been fascinated by middle eastern women wearing hijabs where we can only see their expressive eyes. Knowing this, the women took concerted effort to make their eyes most appealing. With the pandemic, masks have caused the same phenomenon in other women. So, I understand the ‘cat-like” comment that you elicited from little Tarzan. Keith
Yes, young Tarzan easily articulated his own visual input. Four or so years ago a young man asked me on the street, ‘Do you have any daughters?’ “No,” I smiled, and he snapped his fingers and basically said, ‘Rats. I would love to have a girlfriend who had eyes like yours.’
Very interesting! As you might expect my dear Tia, I can not close my eyes and clearly see the snowman. 🤔. Miss you and love you so much! 💕
Dear Karen! I chuckle and am not surprised… and we might co-create a jingle about the snowman and chuckle even more about the inability to hold a tune, even though we cherish music! I miss you and love you equally as much! Love, Lees
Very interesting what you report about aphantasia, which I’d not heard of. Especially so since most people (me included) probably assume an artist is particularly good about imagining subjects when confronted with a blank sheet of paper or a canvas. All the more power to you, then, for creating the works you do even while you’re at the aphantasia end of the mental image spectrum. I believe I’m toward that pole, too, and so I’m grateful for photography because I can see what I’m about to record and don’t have to start from zero. At the same time, I’ve learned to take into account what the camera will do to a subject and also how I’ll be able to work with the image afterwards to emphasize or de-emphasize certain traits.
Regarding your second photograph, I noticed on the sign behind your subject that someone had apparently written palavra, in which the v had then gotten changed to the correct b. As you’ve no doubt noticed, Spanish speakers can’t hear the difference between the two sounds and easily write the wrong letter. Interestingly, palavra turns out to be the correct Portuguese version of the word.
Oh, and related to aphantasia, in an upcoming post I’ll be mentioning another Greek-named cognitive phenomenon, prosopagnosia, which is known in plain English as face blindness.
Thanks for both comments, and of course you would have noticed that sign! I noticed the writing as well, but thank you for the tidbit about Palavra being Portuguese version. The three children range from ‘young adult to young Tarzan; and are all beautiful lovely people with holistic awareness for living in harmony with nature.
It will be great to read about prosopagnosia, and I’m wondering if it is also connected to aphantasia. There was one path of research that led me to a fascinating article about how some grad students had to have a second language in order to graduate, and these often-perfect students were suddenly struggling to pass the course… They didn’t want to have low marks, but some shared the inability to learn the foreign language. It helped me feel not so ‘dumb,’ as it’s not that I don’t want to learn, I often cannot decipher what”s being said, or it goes through a shredder in the mind’s filters. I look forward to reading what you have to share!
How intriguing, Lisa. I had never heard of aphantasia until reading your post and clicking on the link. I don’t think I’ve got it, since I can envision that snowman or the apple on the plate. But unlike you I could never paint those objects in way that would appeal to other people. 🎨
That’s great that you have the gift of ‘visualization’ – though most likely if you have time each week to focus on drawing and then painting, you’d surprise yourself. The students that meet each Tuesday here are doing some fantastic work. With their permission I will be sharing some of their favorites… Like any other interest, discipline is important – and practice!
This is so interesting, Lisa – I always thought I was poor at visualisation, being so ‘word-y’ – but around 20 years ago I began a spell of several years where I had spontaneous visualisations when I sat quietly on my meditation cushion, the visualisations as they unfolded over several years ( intermittently, I could never tell when they were going to appear) providing me with guidance through a particularly tough time on my life. When they were no longer needed, it seems, they stopped happening. I was having a long transit of Neptune at the time…they’re all recorded in a notebook somewhere. Maybe I should dig it out and write about that highly(inner) visual time!
That was certainly a gift of the universe. Beautiful! and then the gift faded out…. Yes, I think that many people would love to hear an expanded version of your story.
A very interesting post, Lisa. You have given me much to think about. I have never heard of aphantasia before. Thank you!
Yes, it was a surprise to me – and I still ponder and wonder about what others see/don’t see.. but, I am glad that it’s taught me how to pay close attention to details…
You had me thinking, Lisa. When I was young, I had trouble spelling and still do. I would dread when the “spelling bees” were introduced in our classroom. I simply could not spell and I would be out the first round. My mother tried to help by saying close your eyes and see the letters in you mind. I could not see the letters or if I did, they would appear for a couple of seconds and the melt away. Our minds are amazing.
What an interesting moment of your past. I was a good speller, but for me it was a bit like the syntax of a word – who knows how I processed it — but since dogpaddling through Spanish, I have become a horrible speller in English! I find myself re-checking words. You are so great with history – and that was my very weakest subject. Maths were my best – like solving puzzles. Maybe this new research will eventually help all teachers to better reach each individual stuent.
So next time you’re at the mirror, lean forward and look at your eyes, then close your eyes and see if there’s an image.
Thanks for sharing this very personal glimpse into your world, Lisa, and opening our eyes, pardon the pun, to aphantasia. Obviously it’s no hurdle to your artistic talent and I’d love to learn more about how you triumphed over it.
Maybe it’s a bit like migratory species instinctively going where they belong at a certain time/date… and if they had the ability to discover the human’s use of GPS, they might say, ‘GPS? Seriously? You have gadgets that show you exactly where you are and guide you where to go?’ Maybe artists with aphantasia strengthened other areas of their brains – so that drawing and paying attention are well-honed skills.
I like that very much!
This is fascinating! I can easily picture things in my mind, though if I were to try a drawing, I’d want a photo or an actual object as a model, if the subject were more complex than an apple or a snowman. Interesting!
Wow! Great Cindy, to get your feedback and know that you have ‘the gift’ — who would have thought that some people can ‘see’ things and others cannot?! But yes, having that object in front of us makes all of the difference in drawing a symbol vs that item!
This has been a fascinating read, Lisa. It never occurred to me that my ability to ‘see’ things in my mind’s eye might not be a common experience.
My earliest memory is purely visual. I still was in my high chair, eating breakfast in our kitchen. There were yellow and white gingham curtains at the window and white ‘gingerbread’ trim around the top of the wall. The stove was on the west wall, I was sitting on the south wall next to the table, and my mother was doing dishes at the sink across from me. It was 8:15 in the morning, and the sun was shining.
How do I know all this? Especially the time? Because many years later I recalled an incident from that morning, and my mother stared at me like I’d grown two heads. She had opened the doors below the sink to put her (white enameled with a red trim) dishpan away, and found a mouse. She slammed the dish pan on top of the mouse and said something like, “There! That’ll keep it until your dad gets home.”
She remembered the day, and I had every detail right. Of course I couldn’t interpret the time on the clock — I hadn’t yet learned to “tell time.” But I can see the position of the hands; today, I know the time from that.
I’ve kept that ability through the years. When I want to find a passage in a favorite book, there’s no need to thumb through pages. I often can “see” the passage, and go to it easily; sometimes, I even see the page number. If someone asks, “Where did you see your first [name any flower]?” I don’t have to get out a diary to look it up. I just see the flower, and the road, and the slant of the sun, and know where I was and what time of day it was.
I can describe innumerable things from my past, down to the smallest detail: my grandmother’s sewing closet, my parent’s bookshelves, the side garden in our first house. Amazing, really.
I’m so glad you posted about this — I’ve had great fun sorting through these memories. It’s rather like having a slide show of my life — but in my head. What a trip!
Those are fascinating stories – so fascinating that if you were telling me in person, my jaw might be totally ‘open’ in amazement and awe. It would be as surreal as watching Close Encounters and seeing a spaceship lower to the earth! I can imagine your mother’s amazement! Now that you know that not everyone has the gift that you do, you realize what a true gift it is. Wow.
So, most people can imagine a forest in their mind’s eye with their eyelids closed. You can imagine one with your eyelids open. Image-in that! You can see with both kinds of eyes at the same time! No?
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
—Thoreau, Journal, 5 August 1851
How much virtue there is in simply seeing!
—Journal, 10 April 1840
Such a smarty-pants, that Thoreau.
Ha! Yes, he definitely wins the prize on the artfully-written style of prose. He set a great example by disconnecting and illustrating that any one has the power to do that — but most people are not comfortable with long periods of isolation/disconnect.. And then there are the rare ‘birds’ who thrive in that type of environment!
Loved this post.. I can visualise behind closed eye lids… but transferring data seen or felt to canvas or journal ends up coming through the heart.. And the Heart is all that matters.. ❤
What a fascinating topic. I’ve never heard of aphantasia. What’s more, I’m shocked that you don’t visualize what you’re about to create before you start working with the media. I can easily visualize the snowman. I can visualize the waterfall, the babbling brook, the classroom, I can almost smell the hash house kitchen as well as visualizing the fryer, the stove, the tubs of condiments…. But I can’t draw any of that. Perhaps my inability to draw has something to do with my visualization of what I should draw. ? Crazy.
Lisa, thanks for getting in touch re our common curiosity and interest in aphantasia. I learned about it when I discovered my wife was not able to visualize for a memory technique I attempted to show her. I wrote about the topic at https://fredfirst.substack.com/p/i-just-dont-see-it