AN 88-year-old woman who only began painting a year ago has sold her first piece for thousands of pounds.

Dorothy Metcalfe sold the piece, titled Mimeo, after it caught the eye of a private collector from the Far East who saw the image on Facebook.

The retired interior designer from Malvern decided to start painting as a way of keeping her arthritis at bay in her hands.

Instead of spending money on expensive canvases, she repurposes things she finds around her home and Mimeo was painted on an old shower curtain.

She said: "I've always enjoyed design and the use of colour.

"Having retired from interior design, not only was I getting bored, but my hands were starting to seize up.

"Someone suggested I started painting and I decided to use things I had in my house instead of splashing out on expensive canvases.

"I've been told my work is a little like Jackson Pollock's, but I'm not sure whether someone was using Cockney rhyming slang when they said that."

A friend uploaded a photo of the artwork to their Facebook page and, several weeks later, she was approached by a representative of a collector in the Far East, who offered her thousands for her work.

Mimeo will be shipped at the end of January.

Several new pieces are now being planned and she is hoping to have her first exhibition in the autumn of 2017.