Ken Walters explains how a stroke led to a life as an artist:
When I was taken into hospital in 2005 and told I’d had a stroke, it felt like yet another wretched episode in the disaster that was my life. I was bedridden once more, paralysed down one side, with only a pad and pen to communicate. But on my first day, after writing a note to the nurse, I found my right hand wandering across the page. I’ve never been a doodler. The closest I’d come was copying a cartoon as a child, and I hadn’t drawn since. That’s why it was so strange. The act was unconscious; only when a nurse asked me what I was doing did I look down to see patterns all over the paper.
From then on I was waking every night at 2am and drawing until dawn. I asked the doctor what was going on and told him that it didn’t feel normal – that I’d never drawn before in my life but suddenly couldn’t stop. He explained that very occasionally, following a stroke, a person’s brain rewires itself to avoid the damaged area. Sometimes this can expose a new ability in a patient: in my case, drawing.
