Sussex mouth-painting artist Bazza West shares his remarkable art

Sussex-based mouth-painting artist Bazza West has made it his mission to help inspire people to get creative at home during lockdown.
Bazza WestBazza West
Bazza West

Due to physical disability, Bazza, who lives in High Hurstwood outside Uckfield, paints with his mouth. His art tutorial helps viewers learn his artistic techniques, and they can even follow along with their mouth and feet as he does.

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He’ll be teaching how to paint a beautiful daffodil. You’ll need a palette of primary colours, predominantly yellow, orange and green paint. Bazza has chosen lilac for his background, but feel free to mix it up and get creative.

To make it as easy as possible for all abilities to follow along – particularly if you want to try painting with your mouth – Bazza has created a design outline or you can follow a tutorial to see how he created an outline of the design for you to make yourself.

As a young man Bazza was an active sportsman and by the age of 17 was running his own gardening business. Then, while driving his car, two years later, he swerved to avoid hitting a badger and slammed into a tree. He became a quadriplegic. Bazza’s rehabilitation meant he spent 11 months in hospital and for a period of time was on a life support machine because of breathing difficulties.

But his life later took on a new and transformative direction when he began to mouth-paint, and he soon realised this was something that, as a person with no mobility from the neck down, could become a great outlet for his self-expression. In 2013, he was accepted as a student artist with the Mouth & Foot Painting Artists (MFPA) and his future really began to take shape. With MFPA support his confidence in himself and as an artist has grown dramatically.

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