Creative spirit set free by wasting brain disease

By JEREMY LAURANCE

The work of an artist stricken by dementia underwent a remarkable transformation, becoming increasingly free and original as her brain decayed, according to new research.

The findings suggest that some types of dementia may release new areas of creativity that grow and develop as language skills decline.

The woman artist was a high school art teacher who had emigrated to the United States from China as a teenager.

She was trained in Western representational art and Chinese brush-painting and, though talented, her work was conservative, featuring landscapes and classical Eastern scenes.

In her early fifties she was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a rare type of inherited dementia, and was forced to give up teaching as she became increasingly forgetful and found it harder to write and speak.

But she continued to paint and as the disease progressed, she started merging the Eastern and Western styles.

Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who describes her case in the journal Neurology, said: "Her painting became wilder and freer and more original as her language declined.

"It was clear that she was released from the formal restraints of her training.

"Her later pieces were no longer realistic but had an intense emotional and impressionistic style."

Although she stopped painting in 2001, the artist still talks about her work and her approach to it, despite having limited speech.

"When she talks about her painting, her language comes more freely and is more spontaneous than when any other topic is discussed," Dr Miller said.

The case adds to evidence that the loss of brain cells in the area of the brain that controls language can have a bonus. Other patients with no previous artistic ability have developed a talent for painting following the onset of similar dementia.

In this artist's case, her illness also seems to have released her from her social inhibitions.

Instead of working alone in her studio, she started to go out to cafes and concerts, where she would sketch people while eavesdropping on their conversations - and sometimes joining in.



Dr Miller said: "Whatever the mechanism, our patient represents a remarkable example of how a truly talented individual can continue to evolve and create in the face of a degenerative brain disease."

Cases such as hers had changed his attitude to dementia patients.

"We typically don't think that something could be getting better - we only think about what's getting worse.

"Now I always ask if there is anything patients are doing very well, or better than before. It's a remarkable response to a dementing illness."

- INDEPENDENT