Look bright and hide flaws

Paul beneath his beloved William Baffin rose, a Canadian from the Explorer Series.

He started his decorative painting seriously a year ago, doing jobs for his friends. Now he has a burgeoning business, Painted Finishes

“This painting can make any part of the apartment look bright and hide flaws in old walls,” Mandracchia said, nodding toward the living room windows, which provide a spectacular view of Lake Michigan.
— by Kevin Lynch in The Milwaukee Journal, August 14, 1988

One of the really difficult things about MS for Paul is that it made him unsure of how he looked. He disliked losing tone in his abs from sitting all the time, so he did countless exercises for his core. So accustomed was he to having a ramrod straight back that he’d surprise himself when looking in the mirror, not expecting the slouching figure looking back.

When we met, Paul looked at old pictures of an uncle and of his father. He believed he could count on his genes and hard work to preserve a physique and countenance that he wore proudly as Italian and Sicilian (for him two very different things). This was foreign territory for me. I have no such sense of myself or my appearance. For me, you just work with what you’ve got. Both Paul and I knew we were members of the PNC — the Prominent Nose Club. For him is was a celebration; for me, something that might come along with my glasses when I took them off.

Though lovely, this photo of Paul’s detailed drawing misses the real intricacy of his work.

About 10 years ago it was clear that Paul’s old way of creating things was going to be challenging. His drawings from the 1990’s were remarkable for their detail and precision. Tremors and optic neuritis made that type of work impossible. He was devastated. He stopped creating at all. I tried many different approaches over the years, so did a score of recreational therapists and a few friends. As recently as this summer, Gregg set up a table on the patio for Paul to use for grinding burrs from a bronze sculpture he made more than a decade earlier. The summer project waited because he was too frequently hospitalized to get started, but also because he was too reluctant to seek help. Rose’s most recent effort involved having Paul meet one of her young students; she felt they could inspire one another. Again, Paul’s health kept deferring the meeting.

After a few years of his artistic inactivity, Paul confided in me his pre-occupation with his feelings about disability. We agreed that I would support him in doing a series of self-portraits reflecting how he felt inside, no matter what the feeling was. These paintings and drawings were not always easy for me to see because I seemed a failure at times for not finding ways to make his life better, easier. I wanted to protect him. The Open Canvas fund raisers for MIAD were a boon to this project we concocted. Paul would have a friend take him to the warehouse gallery to paint for a day to benefit the school when his work would be sold. He would do the portraits to help someone else.

Paul painting a self-portrait at Open Canvas. He is shown making the red slashes that signify the pain of his loss of vision.

These self-portraits are some of my favorite works. They show his challenge to a small degree. One cannot imagine the contortions and practice involved in just doing 30 minutes of painting. Even mixing paint became a challenge. But I loved that he did it. I loved that I cheered him on. I am so proud of him and us. Together we pushed hard against the misunderstanding that Paul was flawed in any way. But he alone did the paintings and drawings. These are all Paul.

Here are other drawings and paintings he did until 2013 when his production pretty much stopped.