A MAN who got separated from his dad as a young boy at the Bradford City fire disaster has raised £3,300 for the Burns Unit appeal by expressing his emotions from that day on canvas.

Builder Paul Town, 46, painted the poignant Broken Souls artwork in a single day and he said art has helped him cope with what he experienced at Valley Parade and will never forget.

The painting from his mind's eye depicts 56 souls walking towards an imaginary football ground in a northern town gripped in grief and then two people holding hands, one in a City shirt and one in Lincoln colours.

Mr Town, of Hallfield Drive, Baildon, who also paints stadium portraits for a living, had gone to the match on May 11, 1985 with his dad and they had been in the stand where the fire broke out.

A few minutes before half time his dad left him to go to the tea bar to get a coffee and a chocolate bar.

Mt Town said what happened next changed his life forever.

He remembers a lighted match or cigarette end had been dropped on the floor at the back of the stand sparking a blaze.

He said he can still hear the rush of the ball of fire as it spread and remembers his dad coming back and telling him to run as fast as he could down the stand on to the pitch to get out.

He saw badly injured people but lost his dad in the chaos which followed and had to walk home alone.

His dad also arrived home safely but Mr Town said they were the "lucky ones" out of the 56 dead and 265 injured.

Mr Town said he is still haunted by the Valley Parade disaster and has struggled over the years from the trauma.

But a Christmas gift of a painting set from his mother, also an artist, helped him find a way of coping with it.

He combined his love of football and his old schooldays passion of drawing with painting stadium portraits, capturing the olden times.

But the Broken Souls painting came almost "in a trance" from his heart and his mind's eye like an outpouring of all those emotions he had felt on that day almost 30 years ago.

He sold the original for £350 and then sold 56 prints of it for £56 each and this week presented all the proceeds in a cheque to consultant surgeon Ajay Mahajan, who leads the Plastic Surgery and Burns Research Unit based at the University of Bradford.

Mr Mahajan, who is hoping the 30th anniversary burns appeal will make £300,000, said: "It was a pleasure meeting up with Paul and to see his work. "Having been at Valley Parade on the day, 30 years ago, he must have obviously been overwhelmed by the events of the day, especially at that tender age. "People have different way to cope with such life changing events and as Paul himself put it, he feels it very relaxing to paint his portraits.

"He is a very talented artist with a heart of gold to have come up with this idea of painting the 'Broken souls' picture and selling 56 copies of it to raise funds for our unit. It was a real pleasure to receive a signed copy of the painting from him and the Plastic Surgery and Burns Research Unit will display it on its walls with great pride"

The appeal has now raised more than £100,000 which will be presented to Mr Mahajan at half-time of City's last home match of the season against Barnsley today.