Artist Grant Boland continues painting after stroke
For St. John's visual artist Grant Boland, the trouble that ended with a stroke in January began in October.
"I started to have these dizzy spells, like the room would kind of sway back and forth. I'd have one or two of those a week," Boland, 45, told CBC in his studio.
As the days went on, the dizzy spells became more frequent.
"The motion, the spinning, would become more violent," he said. Towards the end of the month, he was having them several times a day until Jan. 25, when — while he was painting — he suffered an acute stroke on the left side of his cerebellum.
"I felt the spell coming on, the dizziness, so I told my wife, 'OK, this is happening, I'm going to go lie down.' Because it's always best to be horizontal, I find. Because I'll stagger, and I'd have to grab something, so falling is a risk."
He was in bed, enduring the violent dizziness, when his tongue went numb, followed by his lips and his face — and he lost control of his arm. He and his wife immediately recognized the symptoms of a stroke.
Paramedics took him to the hospital — but even a stroke couldn't keep his mind off his work.
"I was in the middle of a painting that had to be done for the following day, and I only had a couple of hours, so I said to the doctor, 'Just let me go, I'll finish the painting and I'll come back, and do what you have to do then.'"
But when he stood up to use the washroom, it became clear he wouldn't be finishing the painting any time soon.
"It was like I was a marionette, and there was a drunk toddler in control," he said.
Boland stayed in the hospital for five or six days and then was referred to the Miller Centre for rehabilitation. The stroke wasn't due to lifestyle, he said. Doctors aren't positive, he added, but they think the damaged artery that caused the stroke might have happened as a result of his violent dizzy spells.
Still numb in left arm
Cognitively, he's fine. Through physiotherapy, he's regained feeling in his left leg, but his left arm still has numbness. He paints with his right, but does use his left for some of his art, such as a planned set of sculpted glass lamps with his wife, fellow artist Tracie Boland — he needs his left arm for that.
"This left hand is really important for sculpture, there's no question about that," he said.
Fortunately he was able to pick up the brush and resume painting immediately after leaving the hospital.
"I finished that painting. It was late, but I finished it," he said, laughing. "I've done several paintings since. I mean, that's the best therapy."
The numbness meant he had to be careful about how he was holding things.
"I made quite a mess. I dropped coffee, I dropped the palette, I flicked the paint," he said.
Boland's often-photorealistic work requires precision — something incompatible with not having full control over his limbs, he said.
'You don't want to stagnate'
"Spastic motion is not conducive to that kind of focus and work," he said. He hopes feeling will return to his arm.
"I thought I was going to die, up in the bed, for sure," he admitted, adding that he thinks his health scare has made him less complacent in how he approaches his work.
"You look at things a little bit differently. You don't want to stagnate," he said.
