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An aspiring artist's creative career is back on track after she had sight-saving surgery at an eye clinic.

Seventy-year-old Jane Davies has been taking her art skills to a professional level in recent years, with the aim of selling her paintings to a wider audience, but the onset of a cataract in her left eye was making her time in front of the canvas more difficult.

Over time, cataracts become worse and start to interfere with vision. Important skills can be affected, such as driving, and loss of vision can affect the overall quality of life in many ways including reading, working, hobbies and sports. If left untreated, cataracts will eventually cause total blindness.

Jane, from Oswestry, was due to have an operation on the NHS. However, because the pandemic had caused a backlog of surgery for sight and other procedures on the NHS, she was booked in at Newmedica Shrewsbury, which has been assisting the NHS with its waiting lists.

"I was a bit nervous about the operation because I was worried about how it would affect my ability to draw and paint," she said. "But it was fine – and I didn’t have any pain.

"For the past 12 months I’ve been painting four or five hours a day, but it was making my good eye weaker because it was having to work harder to compensate for the eye with the cataract.

"I draw animals freehand, using thousands of black pen dots to create the values and contrasts, and then I add flowers in detailed watercolour. I need to see the fine dot details and varying tones in the watercolours clearly, and I need good eyesight to be able to do that, so I hope my work will improve further now I’ve had the operation."

Senior reporter for the Shropshire Star focusing on Shrewsbury.