Art exhibit documents recovery from spinal cord injury

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - Walter Gunn stepped wrong the night of Nov. 3, 2015, and fell headlong from the deck on his South Bend home.

He didn't fall far, only six or seven feet, but he landed on his head and broke the third and fourth vertebrae in his neck.

"I knew right away, after I caught my breath, I knew that I was paralyzed," he says. "All I could do was wait for my wife to come out and find me, which she did."

While he waited, Gunn says, he remained calmed.

"Oddly, I had no fear," he says. "I knew I was paralyzed. I thought, 'This is a revolting development. I'm paralyzed.'"

That sort of dry, self-effacing sense of humor evident in his "revolting development" comment certainly helped Gunn through the next few months as he underwent surgery the next day in South Bend and then six weeks of therapy at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

But so did painting.

Since his sophomore year at the University of Illinois in the 1950s, Gunn has been an artist. After stints with General Electric in Milwaukee and a large consulting firm in Chicago, he and his wife, Nancy, moved to South Bend, where they raised their three children, Nathan, Natalie and Noelle, and he founded Omnicraft Inc.

The company specialized in graphic design and creating and building trade show exhibits for companies across the country.

After Gunn, 81, sold Omnicraft and retired, he turned to fine arts, an avocation that looked as if it had ended with his accident.

"I could barely pick up a pencil, and I thought, 'How am I going to do art?'" he says. "That was very disconcerting to me."

But he persevered and continued to relearn how to walk and use his hands. A few weeks later, he says, "I managed to pick up a pencil or chalk or pastel, and I scratched something out."

Fast-forward to now, and Gunn has progressed well beyond scratching out something.

The 75 or so paintings in the exhibit "From Paralysis to Recovery" - through Sept. 14 at the Salvation Army Kroc Center - are exquisite, each one technically precise and aesthetically beautiful.

If 75 paintings in less than two years sounds like a lot, Gunn's completed another 25 paintings not in the exhibit since his accident.

He works in his basement studio, standing at the same drafting table he bought - already 40 years old at the time - when he started his career more than 50 years ago.

"That's how I worked when I designed trade show exhibits," he says. "I always worked at a drafting table. I work very fast. When you're designing things for other people, you have to."

His subjects include desert and mountain scenes inspired by the landscape near the winter home he and Nancy own in Arizona, verdant Midwestern landscapes, weather phenomena and ships.

Gunn works from memory, imagination and photographs.

"A typical desert storm," he says, inspired the dramatic "Walking Lightning."

"I love that, because it looks almost unreal," he says about weather phenomena. "I like to do abstract things on the side. . It's unbelievable what some of these cloud formations look like."

But he doesn't feel compelled to depict reality exactly.

"Waiting for the Crew," for example, depicts a docked boat, but he "faked some of the big rigging on that," he says, "so if a real sailor looks at it, he may say, 'That isn't accurate.' Artistic license, I guess they call it. I do it all the time."

For the autobiographical "Walt's Mid-Life Crisis," Gunn pasted a photo of himself racing a go-kart - another 10-year hobby for him - to the pastel track he painted as the background.

"That's me flying along about 90 miles an hour," he says.

And after that statement, he acknowledges the irony inherent in his injury. An avid motorcyclist for most of his life, a go-kart racer, and the type of homeowner who climbed trees or onto to his roof to trim back branches, Gunn was always aware of the risks involved with those activities.

But on Nov. 3, 2015, he didn't see walking down the steps of his deck as dangerous.

"I've thought of so many things I've done that easily could have resulted in a broken neck or back," he says, "and it happened at home, simply. I think someone was telling me, 'I'm letting you off easy.'"

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Source: South Bend Tribune, http://bit.ly/2weLfSG

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Information from: South Bend Tribune, http://www.southbendtribune.com