Big thanks to portrait artist Tom Croft for finding a brilliant way to honour our NHS heroes. His shout out on Instagram offered a free portrait to the first NHS worker to contact him; he then threw open the challenge to other portrait artists to do the same under the hashtag #portraitsfornhsheroes

Tom paired me with the Gomes family – Vitor who has been a nurse for 25 years and works in ICU and Claudia, head of nursing and celebrating 20 years in the profession that year. Thank you to Vitor and Claudia, and to all the NHS staff and key workers who kept us safe and kept the country running during the pandemic.

My portrait was selected for Healthcare Heroes, an online exhibition created in collaboration with Paintings in Hospitals and hosted by Google Arts & Culture. It also features in the book Portraits for NHS Heroes, published by Bloomsbury.

I went on to paint another NHS Hero closer to home. This is nurse Deb Chart from my local GP surgery. Always ready with a smile – especially if you have stitches to be removed! Big thanks Deb and the whole team at the surgery.