After a medical boner rendered Richard Lachman a hopeless mental cripple for ten years, a medical miracle transformed him from the jewelry salesman he had been into a sane, brilliant artist America has yet to recognize as an extraordinary talent. When Lou Guzzo, a newspaper music, drama, and arts critic, discovered him, Lachman was experimenting with a unique arts for the blind program. It was an early phase of his new life as an artist, a surprising skill he had developed while drawing the characters around him in a mental asylum. The curse that had condemned him to lunacy turned out to be a blessing in disguise after he was healed by an understanding psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond Vath of Bellevue, Washington. Today, Lachman’s Andy Warhol-like work is enjoyed mainly by discerning doctors and lawyers --- but the people of America have not discovered him, although Guzzo, his biographer, says they soon will. Lachman created hundreds of paintings and drawings in subsequent years, but paralysis of his right arm has limited his work in his Tacoma residence.