The portrait that I failed to draw was mine - for I was so uncertain of the line.

A natural curve in the output of creative people may lead to a rise in confidence with progress. But I happily worked long hours for a thin living, rarely sought more outlets for my vast production, and formal portraits of strangers paralysed me, a fear I was forced to overcome. I was far more at ease sketching unobserved or with those I knew well. Patrick, my bedrock friend since I moved to London at 19, was my favourite subject: kind, modest, wise, a highly intelligent deep thinker, and laid back in every sense.

In 1982, my first solo exhibition in the theatre bar at Sadlers Wells during Ballet Rambert season led to my biggest formal portrait commissions. Each gave me an ‘artist’ identity (this feels an uneasy word). Around the same time, my quick sketch of a child was hung at The Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries. I was thrilled but too terrified to attend the grand opening until forced into a cab by another kind Irish friend… for a memorable evening! Over the next few years more of my sketches and lithos were exhibited by various societies at the Mall venue, but I was always unwell. Hidden undiagnosed pain suffocates selfhood, energy, ability, romance - every aspect of life apart from rare sound friendships. I struggled for diagnosis, then for belief. Unknown to me, ‘Hopeless hypochondriac’ had been written in bold black italics across my GP notes, travelling with me wherever I went. Why? I’ve since learned that this is a common label applied in UK, usually to females with rare undiagnosed conditions. This was not gender bias exclusive to male medics, female medics could be biased too. In my experience, class played a greater discriminatory role. A no-name ‘artist’ with curly hair and regional accent has less chance of belief than a power-dressed patient with briefcase and suit. A greater number of doctors are sincere and caring, but it takes only one brick on the track to derail a train. And those hidden bricks, even when disclosed, are impossible to remove. They still get dug out and replaced on the track by the unscrupulous, to derail my UK care today. The cost of this folly is incalculable in endless suffering, ruined lives, and billions of pounds wasted by the NHS, keeping patients trapped in a repeating circuit of revolving doors.

By 1988 I was a single mum with a baby and 3 year old, my body wracked. My final exhibit at the Mall Galleries was a sketch of my daughter aged 5 in 1993, the year I had emergency surgery for a critical spinal defect after a 2 year agonised delay. Partial diagnoses followed, knee, hips and my entire GI tract - distended and collapsed onto my lumbar spine. At age 5, surgery disclosed half my liver was in my right chest, it was left in situ as a tumour had been feared. This clue to rare weak stretchy tissues was never again considered in UK.

Photography courses were an escape and uplift as gut surgeries failed; my camera caught familiar friends and my daughters, who loved creating home theatre and dressing up,

In 2001 I bought a cheap dilapidated studio by the sea in a desperate attempt to get back to art, but ‘property’ had become a predatory jungle as prices rose, a disabled woman was easy prey. Years of cruel attempts to force me out via hateful letters and direct sabotage caused me profound mental torment meshed with extreme physical pain, expressed in outpourings of prose and verse. Similar problems piled in London. Since the rat-race 90s, flats had become investments not homes, and the latest PM’s promise was to ‘make more British millionaires’. I circuited London and the sea by trains, tubes, buses and crutches, and in rare free moments scribbled sketches of people on the prom beyond my seafront bay window, at eye-level from my sofa - the dream view which had drawn me to the flat. Promenaders sometimes paused, giving me 10 seconds, most walked or cycled past, giving me 3 - 5 seconds to snatch the moving figures crossing my window frame. Many hounded years later I escaped, during which time the Iraq war raged and my empathy for sufferings of those at the mercy of brutality, present and past, surged to an unknown place. Saturated with relentless dread, I learned of politics: Profit-hunger, corruption, power games, class divisions and gross inhumanity. But within and because of these years, came a momentous twist of fate, the greatest silver lining of my life: I hit breaking point, and the coincidence of timing and events saved both my daughters’ lives. (This is a bigger story, a link will follow.)

Never ever lose hope or faith.

Bullying, pain and disability still rose and NHS doors closed. Rarities have no place within the comfort of disbelief. But the invisible work of fate was still preparing miracles…

A series of skilled repair surgeries in the Far East began. I sketched from my wheelchair, my elder daughter at my side, my younger daughter my pathfinder. I was - am - blessed.