Sunderland artist uses health battle as inspiration for new exhibition

Eight years ago, Gary Nicholson was working as a joiner and living the life of “a normal bloke.”

But while surgery was successful in removing the tumour on his spinal chord, it left him paraplegic and unemployed after three decades as a craftsman.

Now, after changing direction through a masters degree in design from Sunderland University, he is opening an exhibition of work based around his experiences which saw him turn his tragic circumstances into a new start.

Gary said: “My whole career was gone overnight, and I basically sat around not knowing what you do.

“Then a friend I knew from school who was studying for a degree in glass and ceramics suggested that I come along and have a go at the National Glass Centre.

“That got me into art, and eventually art therapy classes at the Art Studio in Hendon.”

The Art Studio fired up Gary’s passion for the subject and he applied to study at Sunderland, first completing a degree in illustration.

His exhibition, Regeneration, will be at the Showcase Gallery in the Priestman Building until Friday.

It includes illustrations, glass work and ceramics, which each reflect his experiences of disability and how art helped him change.

He added: “My response to becoming paraplegic was just to buckle down and get on with it – but looking back now I realise just how much it did mess with my head.

“It sounds a daft thing to say for a man in a wheelchair, but I didn’t want to just sit around.

Gary and fellow student Will Johnson are looking into how they can start their own community art therapy business with advice from university’s business start-up unit, the Enterprise Place.

Gary recently worked with users of Middlesbrough Spinal Unit as part of his masters and they made work using a virtual space, which he believes is the next step for art therapy.

“Art therapy has been around since the Second World War, but it is still very stuck in traditional ideas of painting, drawing and sculpting,” he added.

“With new virtual technology there is a new tool we can use in art therapy, the creative possibilities of which are almost limitless.”