There was no art in my home when I was growing up. Apart from a picture of the Sacred Heart, a statue of the Virgin Mary and other devotional artefacts, I cannot remember anything else on the walls apart from a mounted clock and the odd mirror.

However, my interest in drawing began when I was young because my father could draw rather well and when we played together he would show me how, producing some of the blank paper and charcoal he would bring from work. He was a dispatch hand with Scottish newspapers and the bin ends of the Daily Record paper rolls provided great practice material.

At school I was considered rather good at art and as a result formed special and hugely inspirational relationships with art teachers, who nurtured my interest with books and the occasional visit to the Glasgow Art Gallery. And so it began, a passionate love affair with drawings, paintings and sculpture, which took me on meandering journeys with boyfriends through Europe and beyond just to see the Paul Klees or Egon Schieles or the work of Malevich or Rothko.

I have never been interested in valuable jewellery or very expensive clothes but my secret indulgence involves trips to Angela Flowers Galleries, the Cadogan Contemporary or the Beaux Arts in London or Cyril Gerber's and the Compass Galleries in Glasgow. People always assume that buying paintings is the hobby of the rich but many of the paintings or sculptures I have purchased have been relatively inexpensive but have given me pleasure beyond measure. I also make a practice of buying a piece of art as a wedding present for my nieces on the premise that contented lives need more than linen and glassware.

When my husband's mother died we used the money she left to set up an art project in his department at Bart's and the London Hospitals. Iain's work as a surgeon involves reconstruction of faces after trauma, or cancer or because of childhood deformity and he had the inspirational idea of bringing a young painter into the process. The project has created the hugely successful "Saving Faces" exhibition which now tours internationally and it proved not only that art should be present in every area of our lives but that it has extraordinary restorative powers.

Judging on the Discerning Eye was a heaven-sent opportunity to play the role of curator, choosing paintings that caught my imagination, artists whose work I had long admired or recently come to know. The paintings which had been entered in the open submission were overwhelming in their diversity of subject and style. It was a feast but also a challenge. A discerning eye? Who is to say? The eye is just the portal to the brain and the heart. The test for me is about wanting to look again and again.

 

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