An Ashby artist has won a top regional award despite suffering from a rare eye condition.

Sue Gardner has a studio in Measham and also teaches at the St Helen's Community Heritage Centre in Ashby.

She is well known for her animal paintings and was recognised for her work last month.

Sue won the Animal Artist of the Year 2021 at the Midlands Enterprise Awards.

The awards are designed to highlight a vastly diverse range of exciting and innovative businesses and industries based in the UK's heartland.

But Sue says she wants to paint as much as possible before her eye condition worsens.

She is already restricted to a certain extent - which is why Sue says she uses as big a canvas as possible and wants to be as productive as she can, while she still can.

Sue has given Ashby Nub News permission to reproduce part of her blog which can be found on her website HERE, and explains her condition.

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She writes: "This is the story of how I came to paint such big pictures.

"I came back to art later in life and I soon found that I was so excited about painting that I used to begin at 5 am, and paint for an hour or two before heading to work with my dogs.

"About that same time I also began to have blurry vision, the first sign of the disorder that I live with now, although I didn't know it at the time.

"To cut a very long story short, I was referred to the eye hospital who quickly decided that I may have Sarcoidosis , a rare auto-immune condition, hard to diagnose. I have been having specialist treatment ever since.

"As my eye symptoms became worse at work, I was forced to give up my role as a dog groomer. One good thing was that I had time to do more painting.

"I began to hope that one day I would become a professional artist.

"As my skills improved I offered dog, cat and horse portraits.

"But there were set backs with my health andI remember that I would lie in bed with a pad of paper and pastels and just try to carry on painting.

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"Art was something to dream about during these rather unhappy days.

"As my condition began to stabilise I began to create larger pieces, less detailed , featuring wildlife alongside the pets. Small details might evade me but I found that I could learn to paint in an impressionist style, using elements from my imagination, instead of following photographic references closely.

"During the first big lockdown of the pandemic, lots of things happened that enabled me to make the decision to became a full time professional artist.

"At the same time I lost central vision in my left eye, and as a result I made the decision to create large scale canvases exclusively!

"I got the opportunity to move to a big studio with plenty of room and light. I found a great art courier and packaging company to assist me in the logistics side of transporting big pieces.

"The thought that I might have limited time, with useful sight drives me on to make the most of the time that I have. I don't want to leave any painting left unfinished!

"To misquote one of my heroes, Robert Plant 'Just give me bigger canvases!'"