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The average person with myopia has a prescription of -2.5. Jamie O’Leary's prescription is -32, and now he's facing eye surgery that could potentially leave him sightless.

Jamie has built a career around producing groundbreaking programmes that take a fresh look at disability. He has also worked on popular travelogue shows with some of the UK’s funniest talent including Karl Pilkington, Romesh Ranganathan and Katherine Ryan.

At this pivotal point in his life, O’Leary wants to explore how creative people cope with losing their sight and how blind artists achieve their creative vision of a world they see from a unique perspective. In Blind Ambition (麻豆官网首页入口 Two), he hooks up with blind observational comedian Jamie MacDonald, who helps him face the prospect of blindness with his trademark wry sense of humour. Together they set out on a mission to uncover and collaborate with the best blind creative talent.

In this gallery, you can find out more about the artists they met, and see some of the most inspiring artworks and performances the pair discovered and helped to create.

John Bramblitt, who lives in Denton, Texas, only began painting when he lost his sight in 2001 after complications with epilepsy and Lyme’s disease. Art was his way out of the depression that hit him like a sledgehammer when he became blind.

Learning to distinguish between different paint colours by feel, John taught himself to paint using raised lines to navigate the canvas. Through touch – whether with a living subject or through a 3-D model – this internationally recognised artist creates incredibly lifelike and accurate portraits of people he’s never seen and places he’s never been.

Artist's website:

Chris Fisher is the UK’s only completely blind professional woodturner and the first sightless craftsman to be accepted on to the Register of Professional Turners.

In 2008 he contracted toxoplasmosis and within four weeks had completely lost his sight. The impact of this took Chris to some very dark places. He found solace in woodturning, which he taught himself. Using traditional and modern tools, including lathes, Chris now produces textured sensory and tactile pieces of art in a variety of wood.

“The blind are capable of anything, absolutely anything,” says Chris. “The thing that sets me apart is that we’ve gone full-on balls-to-the-wall with it.”

Artist's website:

Ian Treherne is 95% blind. Born with Retinitis Pigmentosa Type 2, he has central but no peripheral vision. His inherited eye condition will ultimately result in a complete loss of sight.

Ian became a professional photographer in 2000, focussing on arresting portraits and compelling scenes of landscapes and architecture, informed by his own lack of sight. "I created a style with what I can see because I don’t know anything else," says Ian. “Photography allows me to participate in the world.”

The Blind Ambition team set Ian the challenge of creating publicity photographs for the programme.

Artist's website: https://iantreherne.co.uk/

Robert H. King is a digital artist and photographer who has been making photographs and creating art exclusively on mobile devices since 2012.

A graphic designer by training, Robert was interested in exploring the creative possibilities of photography, but his on-going sight issues, including a period of blindness, meant it was difficult for him to operate a traditional camera. The huge developments in mobile phone technology opened up a whole new creative world and over the past decade, Robert has produced powerful digital imagery that challenge preconceptions of what people who are partially sighted can achieve.

Robert collaborated with Ian Treherne to create the Social Murders images.

Stoner is a 27 year old rapper from Reading, who is lauded by established stars on the rap scene including Tinie Tempeh, and Giggs, who he has supported on tour.

Stoner contracted meningitis at the age of 11 and within five years was completely blind. While some of Stoner’s work addresses his eyesight, other tracks touch on issues that are relevant to his contemporaries, whether sighted or not, from criticising the rise in the use of cocaine to discussing his favourite meals.

The artwork above was created for Blind Ambition, and inspired by Stoner's stance on drugs.