Meet the blind Burnley-born painter who found success in China and is now raising money for the MS Society

Burnley-born artist Chris P. Gill was living in China when he lost his eyesight to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), an incurable condition that affects the brain and spinal cord.

As his health and mobility deteriorated, the 54-year-old had to relearn how to do everyday activities, including painting and using a computer, with limited eyesight, and was eventually forced to give up his job as a journalist and move back to the UK.

Despite his struggles, he continued to pursue his passion for painting and is now using his talents to raise money for the charity, MS Society, by donating a portion of the sales of prints of his artwork.

Chris, who received funding from the charity to move house and fix his gutter, said: “I want to pay something back to say thank you. The MS Society is struggling at the moment so we’re trying to create awareness if we can to chip in.”

Talking about the disease itself, he added: “I feel people aren’t that aware of it, even though it’s quite prevalent. They say MS is a disease with a thousand faces. It does a lot of things and you never know what it’s going to do next.”

Despite his illness, Chris has lived a life as vivid as his art. His family emigrated to Johannesburg, South Africa, when he was two-years-old. He later attended the Manchester School of Art and went on to achieve a degree in Politics at Newcastle University before moving to China in 1992 to study Chinese at the People’s University in Beijing.

Chris, also known by his Chinese name “Li Yunfei” (which means Flying Cloud), worked in the country for more than 20 years and travelled around it documenting his life and the changing society through his art.

He opened his first studio in the Old Summer Palace before moving to Shanghai in 1997 where he says he was the only living foreigner to have a solo show at the Shanghai Art Museum. As a journalist, he was the China correspondent for The Guardian and Asia correspondent for The Art Newspaper.

In 2009, Chris began developing MS symptoms but continued to paint, with one of his art shows, China Dream, being immediately shut down by the authorities. A year later, his health had worsened, he was experiencing mobility and partial vision problems, and he was official diagnosed with MS.

Then, in 2011, came the terrifying morning when he awoke to find his eyesight had reduced to 0.1 in both eyes.

"I had already lost my eyesight in one eye but then one morning I woke up and both eyes had gone,” he said.

Chris says modern “foreign” hospitals were available in China but were expensive, and as he could speak Chinese, he was able to navigate local public healthcare. The staff “did absolutely everything that they could”, he adds, and he’d spend hours hooked up to a medicine drip hearing what went on in the emergency room, an experience that inspired his book, The Dripping Rooms of Shanghai.

With his MS attacks becoming more frequent, The Flying Cloud returned home to the UK in 2014 and continues to paint, selling his art via his website https://www.cpgill.art/