Artist Crippled by Rare Illness : Patrick Hogan; Disease Didn’t Stop His Painting

Patrick Hogan, a crippled artist whose renderings of twisted ropes and fibers on canvas often floated off into a freedom of space his body could never imitate, is dead, his mother said Friday.

Her 41-year-old son, a victim of a rare muscular disease (Werdnig-Hoffman syndrome) since he was a child, died Thursday at a New York hospital.

He had been taken there from the basement apartment in Greenwich Village that friends had helped him revamp. He moved there 1 1/2 years ago after the condemnation of his Los Angeles apartment forced him to seek housing suitable to his ever-demanding needs.

Special Easel Developed

In that apartment, his mother said, his body had disintegrated to a point where he could only move his neck. But to keep painting (he had recently been working in watercolors) he invented an easel that he could operate with his mouth and was thus able to select and push colors onto paper.

Earlier, Hogan--winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Young Talent Award--had been forced to redesign his wheelchair as his condition deteriorated and his need for support grew.

“He also had come up with a laser beam device that powered a word processor he directed with his eye muscle,” his mother, Jean, said.

That was how he wrote his letters, did his bookkeeping and balanced his checkbook, she said.

Hogan had been in a wheelchair since he was 10 and had been sketching what Times art critic Suzanne Muchnic once described as “tough-minded abstractions” since age 11.

His mother said he had his first one-man show while at Bishop Alemany High School in Mission Hills and solo exhibitions since his college days at Cal State Northridge.

Paintings of Rope, Acrylic

He was best known for the large paintings of rope and acrylic on canvas that he in later years was unable to complete without the help of an aide who placed the shapes and designs under Hogan’s lengthy direction.

“Sometimes he would be three hours deciding where a piece should go on the canvas,” Jean Hogan said.

He had been able to hold brushes in his mouth until a couple of years ago and earlier had even been able to make the canvases he painted on.

In 1985, his friends staged a unique art raffle where 159 artists sold their work in bunches for $100 per ticket. The event raised about $125,000 that was used to purchase a van in which Hogan was able to get about to his various shows and also helped pay some of his exorbitant medical bills.

Chuck Arnoldi, a friend who initiated the raffle idea, said at the time he was hesitant to approach Hogan even though the young artist by then was on a respirator almost continuously and needed 24-hour care.

“He has never used his physical condition to get support or sympathy,” Arnoldi said.

For that matter, Hogan, who called the raffle the “highlight of his life,” never complained about anything, his mother said.

“He was the most inspirational man to thousands of people,” she said.

His other survivors include a brother, Michael.