Pat Hanly's Dance

Scott Hamilton

This photo, taken from Te Ara's website, shows Pat Hanly working in 1977 on Prelude to a Journey, a mural for Auckland's international airport. Shamefully the mural was removed in 1996 when the airport was redesigned. In 1975 Pat completed another set of huge paintings for the University of Auckland's medical school. Called The Seven Ages of Man, they still grace the school.

I was thinking about Pat Hanly on the weekend because the bright winter sunlight pouring onto our unkempt backyard made it look like one of his psychedelic paintings. Here's a story about Hanly, Huntington's disease, and an Auckland bus.

I was riding through Valley Road with my girlfriend one night at the end of the nineties when she pointed Hanly out. He had recently announced in an interview that he was giving up painting. That had puzzled admirers like me. Why would someone so talented stop doing what they loved?

What I didn't know is that Hanly had Huntingdon's, the rare and terminal genetic condition that, in its early stages, makes hand to eye coordination difficult. Hanly hadn't chosen to retire; he simply couldn't paint anymore. But that night he proved he was still an artist.

When the bus stopped at the Valley Road shops Hanly stood slowly up and clung to a handrail. He waited for the other departing passengers to step off the bus, then took a small, unsteady stride. He leaned one way then the other, grasped at the air, and seemed about to fall over.

I started to stand up to help the painter. A young man in a business suit looked at Hanly and then at me. He winked, and I sensed his contempt. Hanly's grey hair and beard were untidy, and he was wearing a T-shirt and tracksuit pants that looked flecked with paint.

I knew what the suit was thinking. Here was an old bum who'd had too much to drink, who was going to make a fool of himself on the bus home from his pub. But Hanly didn't make a fool of himself, and he didn't need my help. He made a large, confident stride forward.

As he stepped forward he began to move both arms in great arcs, as though the blue evening air in the bus was water, and he was swimming towards the exit. I could see spasms begin in his elbows, then gradually dissolve as his forearms stretched forward.

Hanly was dancing, and he was humming as he danced. It was a deep, rolling sound, an Ommm—that polysemous syllable that Hindu priests use to invoke the universe. Most of the passengers stared, fascinated. The young businessman had a bemused leer on his face.

All good artists turn constraints into freedom. In his paintings Hanly evoked awesome forces—the ocean, the sun, the human genetic code, nuclear weapons—on pieces of canvas and board, using pigments, resins, and solvents. On finite surfaces he suggested the infinite.

On the bus that night Hanly showed he had found another way of turning necessity into freedom. He had incorporated the spasms and wobbles of his sick body into a series of elegant movements. He could no longer walk properly, but he had found a way to dance.

As the bus moved on down Valley Road, my girlfriend asked me why I'd been getting out of my seat. 'I thought Pat Hanly might need some help' I said. 'He's fine' she said. 'I see him on this bus all the time. He's a great artist, you know.'

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