- When an unemployed Liverpool builder began recovering
from a stroke, he developed a compulsion to write poetry, draw, paint and
make sculptures day and night.
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- Tommy McHugh's unstoppable creativity cost him his marriage
but, three years on, he feels "more whole" and, with his art
being exhibited at local libraries and galleries, he has embarked on a
new career.
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- "I can't shut my brain down," he said. "A
few hours at night and that is it."
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- Neuro-scientists are puzzled by the origin of his activity.
Only two other cases of "sudden artist output" are known after
brain damage, both in America.
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- This week McHugh will discuss his obsession in public
with Dr Mark Lythgoe, of University College London, at the Science Museum's
Dana Centre in London.
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- Dr Lythgoe has co-written a paper on the case with Tom
Pollak and Dr Michelle de Haan, both neuro-psychologists, and the international
artist Marion Kalmus.
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- McHugh, 54, left school at 14 and had a history of violence
and class A drug abuse. His only interest in drawing was in scrawling messy,
incomplete tattoos on his arms.
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- He was admitted to hospital in January 2001 with a headache
so severe that he was sick. A scan showed bleeding from a blood vessel
which doctors staunched with a metal clip and a coil to promote clotting.
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- Then he was sent home with "a woman they said was
my wife".
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- Jan, his wife, had to nurse and spoon-feed him as he
talked in rhyme. McHugh suffered from depression and agoraphobia and complained
of a "split mind".
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- After six months he began to write poetry. He started
drawing on the walls of his house, images that expanded until they covered
the rooms.
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- The corners of the rooms "looked strange" and
he had to fill them with sculptures. He made them from anything: paper
cups, rubbish, things lying about his house.
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- "If I was put in a studio with 1,000 materials,
I wouldn't stop creating to eat or sleep," McHugh said.
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- Jan left him after eight months, although they remain
friends. "I don't blame her," McHugh said. "I was a different
man."
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- The evolution of his art is being studied by Kalmus,
the artist in residence at the Institute of Child Health, London.
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- "The brain injury gave him the overwhelming compulsion
to make art but did not give him instant technical ability," she said.
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- "His earliest drawings are naive, colourful, obsessive,
passionate. They have a random feel to them and usually depict asymmetrical
objects and faces."
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- But his most recent sculptures of heads were "astonishingly
congruent", Kalmus said. "The faces are more symmetrical, the
colours are softer and they have a technical aptitude alongside their passion
of production."
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- McHugh says his brain has become "joined again".
While he attributes his drive to the inserted metal clip and coil, Dr Lythgoe
links it to the subtle brain damage caused by the stroke, notably to the
frontal lobes that regulate emotions and personality.
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- Dr Pollak said: "The relationship between art and
brain damage is a complex one. Some artists' output, such as that of Willem
de Kooning, take on an entirely new character in the context of brain damage
or disease. There are also cases in which patients with types of dementia
develop previously absent artistic talent or drives.
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- "An American chiropractor called Jon Sarkin sustained
frontal lobe damage and went on to become a successful artist. His story
is about to be made into a film by Tom Cruise."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/2
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