By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

It's a miracle to me that anybody who is paralyzed on the right side can produce paintings the way Terry McMurray does.

I named the one I bought "Blue Shutters." They open on a chaste, white window frame in a crumbling brick wall covered with vivid green ivy. A cloud of white curtain is behind the window panes.

McMurray used to be The Advertiser's police reporter, one of the old-timers, and was about to retire when he had a stroke on Dec. 4, 1994. He had gone about his work in a quiet, self-effacing way; not a brash, stop-the-presses kind of guy.

I doubt that many people are aware of the heroic story that's unfolding inside the tidy McMurray house on Mapuana Place in Keolu Hills. The only hint of it they might have is the vegetable garden that's gone to seed for lack of a gardener.

You see, his wife, Tomiye, also uses a wheelchair. But what the McMurrays lack in fresh vegetables, they make up in art. The house bulges with canvases, framed and unframed, on the walls, in the hallways, over the toilet, stacked beside the dining room table.

On my tour of the house, I counted 25 framed paintings in the den, four in a bedroom, one in the adjoining bathroom, eight more in another bedroom plus one in the bath, six in the hallway, 72 in the living room plus six more unframed and about 50 rejects piled on a table.

The artist didn't sit for an interview because he can't talk. But his wife can. Terry can point and nod and shake his head and look frustrated. It helped that we are friends from a different time and that Advertiser reporter Mike Leidemann was there. Mike takes Terry for a ride once a week to a shop in Kahalu'u to get his pictures framed.

McMurray took some art lessons in the fifth and sixth grade but he never painted seriously, only as a hobby. He did a mural on his lanai wall and painted the cement floor to look like tiles.

After his stroke, he spent time at the rehab center. When I asked if he took up painting at the center, where they teach it, he shook his head. Apparently, it was his own idea at home. Since he was a reporter, I asked if he'd rather paint than write.

No question, he'd rather write. Then why doesn't he? McMurray used his left hand and drew an imaginary line down the middle of his face. The right side of his brain is paralyzed. Apparently, that's the writing side because he can't write anymore. The left side must be what painters use. Fortunately, he's left-handed.

His best paintings have a Grandma Moses strength. His colors are often startling and imaginative. Still, I get the feeling that he wishes desperately that he could write. Meanwhile, he paints.

He's sold about 10 paintings so far. He had a one-man show in a coffee shop in Kailua. The Sunshine Arts Hawai'i gallery hangs three of his paintings. But I don't think that's why he paints. His wife said they can't talk to each other. Yet their home is filled with color.