Painter whose art found its fullest expression after he became blind
In May 2005, the artist Sargy Mann went to Cadaqués in Spain to look for new subjects to paint. He was stunned by what he found there. "This is the most amazing town," he enthuses in a film of the trip made by his son Peter. "I can't imagine why I'd ever want to work anywhere else." Then Mann shakes his head, chuckles and says: "What on earth is going on in my mind?" It is a fair enough question, given that he could not actually see Cadaqués, nor anything other than a frail nimbus of light in his left eye; in the film, Mann taps his way around the town with a white stick, measuring its walls with his fingertips.
He went home to Suffolk the next day. On the one after that, his 68th birthday, he woke to find himself totally blind.