Welsh artist Lee Hadwin, who paints in sleep, has baffled sleep experts as he can’t draw when he’s awake.
Imagine waking up and finding a masterpiece on your bedroom wall? A man dubbed the ‘sleepwalking artist’, who can’t draw when he’s awake, is now making a living selling his artworks.
According to Independent website, Lee Hadwin, 40, originally from Wales, whose first UK solo show has recently opened, started drawing in his sleep when he was four-years-old. But, the former care worker admits to being “horrific at art when I’m conscious.”
Hadwin, who has been studied by doctors and psychologists both in the UK and overseas, has been described by the Edinburgh Sleep Clinic as “unique.” He reveals that what is baffling the sleep clinics is that “I cannot produce the same things when I’m awake.”
As a child Hadwin reveals he’d get up in the night and use his crayons to scribble on the walls. But it wasn’t until his mid-teens that the drawings became more detailed.
Nocturnal Creativity
His parents took him to the GP to find a reason for his nocturnal creativity: “A lot of doctors and psychologists put it down to trauma,” Hadwin said. “But there was no trauma in my life before I was four-years-old. I did lose some friends when I was twelve, but I don’t think it was that.”
The Edinburgh Sleep Clinic observed his behavior but their advice to his parents was “just let him carry on.” In the subsequent two decades he has produced more than 600 paintings and drawings of varying styles and subjects.
His work has now become so popular that he has given up his job caring for people who have suffered serious head trauma to focus on selling his work and working for charities. Last year he led a campaign to find a missing pensioner from Denbigh, Wales, where he is from.
In 2013 he made thousands of pounds when he auctioned a large amount of his work on eBay and donated half the proceeds to ‘The Missing People charity’.
