Man who shattered legs in holiday taxi crash and used recovery time to paint now an artist making up to £40k per mural

A landscape gardener who fell asleep in the back of taxi while on holiday in India and woke up in hospital with both legs shattered has said it might be “the best thing that ever happened to him”, as he used his time off work to pursue his dream and become a successful mural artist earning up to £40,000 for a single commission.

Matt Dosa, 38, broke both his femurs and spent a year in a wheelchair after the taxi he was sleeping in collided with a lorry in Goa.

From the moment he woke up, Matt, who had 10 operations on his legs, knew how he would spend his time and, after returning to the UK, he began painting, sometimes for more than 15 hours a day.

Instead of returning to his landscaping job, the self-taught artist from Wood Green, north London, who lives with his wife Lisa, 36, and two children, Lucy, four, and Olivier, one, started teaching art workshops for a charity and soon received his first commission.

He has since painted murals and prints for the NHS, the mayor of London and Universal Music’s Brits after-party, and is due to decorate the entrance of this autumn’s Affordable Art Fair in Battersea, south London.

“I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t broken my legs, it’s a really weird thought,” Matt told PA Real Life.

“It was pretty brutal, to be honest, but in a roundabout way it was the negative thing that very much gave me the step I needed to chase my dream.

“I probably owe half my career to breaking both my legs.

“So in some ways it’s the worst thing that’s every happened to me and the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Matt’s passion for art developed in his early teens when he started doing graffiti under the name Dosa.

“I have never studied art except in school, and I wouldn’t really count that as studying it,” he said.

“It was something I was absolutely obsessed with for as long as I can remember.”

This led Matt to develop a skill for lettering and cartoon characters, but he never saw art as a viable career.

“I painted walls for years,” he said.

“But I didn’t see it as a career at all, it was definitely a passion.”

After finishing school, Matt started working as a landscape gardener.

“I didn’t pursue further education or study art or anything,” he said.

“I definitely took it very seriously, but it was more of a hobby.”

But Matt’s life changed at the age of 30 during a holiday in India in 2015.

He was sleeping in the back of a taxi which crashed into a truck at high speed.

“There’s not much of a story to tell, because I was in the back of the cab asleep and woke up with broken legs,” he said.

“Most people break the fib or tib in their lower leg, but I broke both femurs [thigh bone].

“Shattered them really badly, so I was completely immobile.”

Matt spent the next six weeks recovering in hospital before flying back to the UK.

Fortunately, he had bought travel insurance and was not left with a crippling bill.

“There was a little bit of me which immediately knew what I was going to do with this time,” he said.

Back in the UK, Matt went for an X-ray and was told it would take longer to recover than expected because his legs were “so badly broken”.

“There were all sorts of complications which led to them healing really slowly and I ended up spending a year in a wheelchair,” he said.

Matt, who was signed off work, spent the majority of his time at home, painting for up to 15 hours a day and being looked after by his now wife Lisa.

“She took amazing care of me but when she went to work, I would have these long periods of just being stuck in a wheelchair all day,” he said.

“I just painted non-stop, every day.”

That year, Matt had nine operations on his legs in addition to the one he had in India.

“In the gaps between healing, I just painted and that’s when my style kind of evolved and became more abstract,” he said.

“I wasn’t making any money from it, I was just doing it to pass the time.”

Matt was finally able to swap his wheelchair for a pair of crutches and began looking for another job.

He stumbled on a London-based charity, Single Homeless Project, which was looking for someone to teach art workshops at its Kings Cross branch.

“It started once a week and then just kind of snowballed,” he said.

A few months later, the charity asked Matt whether he could paint a wall in one of their homeless hostels.

Rather than his usual graffiti-style lettering, Matt decided to paint one the abstract pieces he had been working on in his home studio.

“I was just blown away by the result of combining these two ways of painting from different periods in my life,” he said.

Matt also started working at a picture framer, Marks and Tilt in St Albans, which offered him an exhibition in 2015.

A year later, he received his first big mural commission to paint a reception area for Decca Records.

“I used Instagram to advertise what I was doing – that’s the good thing about visual art,” he said.

“Each one of these little commissions or projects led to another couple.

“That’s when I went from scraping by to making an OK living out of art.”

Matt has painted murals for anywhere between a couple of hundred pounds to £40,000, depending on the job.

“It really varies,” he said.

“You can’t expect to just start doing art and just get paid for what you want to do straight away.

“It’s important to value periods when you’re not employed and making money from art, because that’s when you develop your style.

“You can make thousands of pounds but it’s important to struggle.”

This year, he was named Campaign Artist for the Affordable Art Fair Battersea Autumn, which will take place from October 19 to 22.

“They’ve used my print for the campaign for the October fair and I’ve been commissioned to decorate the entrance to the fair,” he said.

Matt, who is represented by After Nyne Contemporary, a London-based gallery, will also showcase some of his work on a stand near the entrance.

“My advice to aspiring artists would be just paint where and when you can,” he said.

“My story is quite unique because I had this period of sitting down forced on me and everyone’s journey is different.

“But anyone who wants to be an artist, if you put every spare minute you’ve got into it, it can happen.”

Follow Matt on Instagram to see more of his work: @matt.dosa

Find out more about the Affordable Art Fair: www.affordableartfair.com