A paragliding instructor who fell 1,500m (5,000ft) has opened an exhibition of his paintings that he describes as a “love letter to being alive”.

Jonny Fox from Brighton had been competing in the British Paragliding Championships in September 2023 when he had his accident.

The display at The Crypt Gallery in Seaford is entitled Back Story and showcases the 50-year-old’s determination to stand for long enough to create landscape oil paintings, which he says aided his recovery.

“After my accident my world shrank immeasurably,” he said. “My thoughts were not more than five minutes into the future, and painting has just opened up everything again to me.”

Jonny was paragliding in northern Spain when he ran into trouble, falling to the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains.

He lay on the forest floor unable to move.

“I don’t know if it was the amount of adrenaline that had just been pumped into my body, but I knew that life, nature, the mountain and the forest had me, and that my friends and other pilots were going to be looking for me,” he added.

The RAF civil servant recalls having a “really good start” in the race, gaining height alongside two vultures.

“I was enjoying flying with the birds, then all of a sudden I experienced the most violent air I’ve ever been in,” he said.

“The paraglider just folded up like a bag of washing,” sending him into an “accelerating spiral dive”.

He deployed his reserve parachute before experiencing another area of turbulent wind.

“That was the first moment I was a bit scared,” he said.

Crashing through trees, which only broke his fall for a “microsecond” he fell the final 15m (49ft) to the ground, fracturing his lower spine.

A fragment of bone was also pushed into his spinal canal.

Within a few hours he was airlifted out of the forest by Spain’s Guardia Civil mountain rescue team, which was documented on Spanish television.

During his time in hospital in Spain he said music helped him deal with the trauma of the accident, as well as the operation to attach rods and screws onto his spine.

“I listened to the same two albums every morning in hospital,” he said, including Elbow’s Live at Jodrell Bank.

“Every time Elbow played One Day Like This the tears would just start, and I would cry throughout the entire song.

“It was better than any of the painkiller drugs they were giving me,” he added.

On his return to the UK, and with a long wait for NHS physiotherapy, friends, colleagues and the “close knit” paragliding community got in touch to give advice, he explained.

Good physiotherapists as well as craniosacral therapy and everything from yoga, acupuncture and hydrotherapy were all transformative, he added.

The Charity for Civil Servants also helped fund a series of counselling sessions which helped with post-traumatic episodes, he said.

“The RAF has also been incredibly supportive in giving me the time off for my rehab as well as supporting my return to work,” he added.

But it was his love of landscape painting that had given him an “extra sense of purpose”.

He had been introduced to the practice by professional Brighton artist Tony Parsons, who Jonny said was “an amazing support and mentor”.

Eighteen months after his accident he said he can now stand for up to an hour in order to capture landscapes.

“I love the excuse of being able to stare at a view without someone thinking you’re just crazy,” he added.

Despite his injuries there had been “so many silver linings” to his accident, said Jonny, “although I wouldn’t want to put my friends and family through it again, of course.”

“I heard a saying that we’ve all got two lives, and our second life starts when we realise we’ve actually only got one,” he said.

“It has been a gift in so many ways and made me realise how precious life is.

My Back Story can be seen at the Crypt Gallery, Seaford, until Sunday 20 April.

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