NINETY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Joan Aubrey can still remember the precise moment as a girl that she realised she wanted to be an artist.

Fast-forward almost 80 years later and she has been selected from thousands of entrants to display her work at a major London arts project.

Her painting After the Bluebells is currently being shown at the EAC Over-60s Art Awards exhibition at the Mall Galleries.

The Southampton pensioner's love of art never dimmed over the years, despite not picking up a paintbrush until the age of 63.

Her first flash of inspiration came as a 12-year-old schoolgirl as she cycled from her home in Beaulieu, in the New Forest, to go to school in Brockenhurst.

"I hardly ever met a soul on the way but I saw plenty of wildlife," she told the Daily Echo. "One day in the spring, I saw a lovely sight a herd of fallow deer, dancing what looked like a figure of eight in and out of the young birch trees in the early morning sun.

"I got off my bicycle quietly onto the grass verge and watched them. I thought what a wonderful painting it would make so when I went home I told my parents I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up I hoped I would be an artist. I might as well have said a criminal. Of course you won't', they said. Artists are nothing but a lot of bohemians' and that was that."

Joan, who has three children, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and another on the way, finally started painting when she retired as a teacher.

The widow, of Regents Park, joined the Southampton Arts Society.

Her latest success is her second painting to be shown by the EAC Awards, a national competition created to promote the talents of amateur artists over the age of 60.

"I have made some progress since I first tried painting, three years after my retirement," said Joan. "I am not clever enough, however, to ever reproduce the beauty of my New Forest deer scene, no one could.

"To all those who say: I can't draw.' I say: Well, you learned to write, didn't you? So have a go!'"