Touched by inspiration (From Gazette & Herald)

Touched by inspiration

TEN years ago, David Baumforth could neither walk nor talk.

He was in a hospital bed in Scarborough having suffered a stroke. Initially, it was not clear whether he would survive.

However, showing downright stubbornness in the face of adversity, David refused to accept that anything serious had happened to him.

"I didn't think it was the end of the world," he smiles.

Today, David, who is aged 60, shows no signs of having been so seriously ill, other than occasionally stumbling over the odd word.

Perhaps most remarkably, however, since the stroke, David, from Snainton, has produced by far the best work of his career.

In trying to put his finger on why this might have been, David muses: "It was maybe realising that we are not immortal."

He adds that he believes his earlier work was "pretty superficial", but sees a lot more of his own self in the paintings he has produced since the stroke, though he accepts that this could be merely coincidence.

David equates what happened to his work with the transformation that occurred in the painting of a fellow landscape artist following a life-changing experience, one John Constable.

"You read about Constable," David says, "and, if we are to believe what we are told, he had a very, very happy marriage. When he lost his wife, when she died, the difference in his paintings was incredible. They put that down to this experience that he had."

Proof of David's remarkable success since his stroke comes in many forms. Art historian and television broadcaster Sister Wendy Beckett has compared him with Turner and Constable, describing his work as "the real thing" and "art to be cherished".

He has exhibited all over the country, with his credits including The Summer Show at The Royal Academy, The Royal Watercolour Society Open and The Hunting Prizes at The Royal College of Art.

On April 26, a major solo exhibition of David's work will begin at the Walker Galleries' modern art gallery in Harrogate.

Through his success, he is keen to show that things can improve greatly for people who have suffered a stroke.

David rubbishes suggestions that stroke victims improve for 18 months and then recover no further.

"Every day I feel an improvement," he says, adding that he has a message for anyone who has suffered a stroke: "Don't give up."

When it became clear that David would survive, he wanted to get this message across to other stroke victims in the ward. "You feel that you want to hold them and say it's not as bad as this, there are ways of getting out of this."

Following his stroke, it was vital from David's point of view to try to live his life as normally as possible.

While others "put themselves into a little cocoon", he would still go out shopping, though he was struggling with speech, and hand over an explanatory note to the person behind the counter.

That defiant spirit is still very much in evidence today. Proud of his working-class roots (he is originally from York's South Bank), David clearly has little time for the arts world establishment, with its "pomposity" and "high-flown, elitist attitude".

He also gives short shrift to the sort of contemporary art that surfaces in the latter stages of the much-criticised Turner Prize.

David has entered a new competition, run by Associated Newspapers, entitled Not the Turner Prize, which seeks to challenge its namesake, notably by offering the same amount of prize money.

It is about "proper painting", as David puts it, not "unmade beds or pickled sharks". The initial entry of 10,000 works has been whittled down to the final 400 and David's watercolour Sunset at Bempton Cliffs is among them.

Yet, he refuses to see anything more in his work than its simple, physical self. "What is a painting?" he asks. "All it is is a piece of paper." He adds: "There's no intrinsic value in the thing."

Despite what he says, there are undoubtedly the strong sensibilities of the artist within him. For example, when talking about the link he sees between the production of music and the creation of a painting.

"I could go out and paint as Schumann and Chopin would write music," he says. "Something would attract their attention and they would paint a picture with notes."

He adds: "You could look at a sky and think that it's very Wagnerian. You could see a butterfly going from flower to flower and alighting on a bush, and think that's very Chopin."

It is, of course, nature that is David's great inspiration. His choice of subjects also make him a specifically North Yorkshire artist - he almost always paints landscapes that are within 15 miles of home.

"When I look at something," he says, "I don't just see what's in front of me. I feel it, I see it, I hear it. I can't just look at what's in front of me."

It is this experience that the artist tries to get across in his work - "the senses, the noises, the smells - everything. The elements of nature - the fire, the air, the water".

His latest exhibition in Harrogate this month will showcase his most recent work, which has been characterised, at least in part, by a return to the art studio and by a more abstract quality.

Most of his work these days is created indoors in the aftermath of an experience with nature, rather than amongst the elements themselves.

This, he says, allows different feelings to emerge in his work, most obviously memories.

"You are painting from a different standpoint," he says.

You can see David's latest offerings at the Walker Galleries' modern art gallery, in Crown Place, Harrogate, from April 26 to May 3.

He is also due to hold another exhibition slightly closer to home, this time at Talents Art Gallery, in Malton market place, from August 1 to August 12.

Updated: 16:14 Wednesday, April 09, 2003