AT the age of 97, Violet Fall has been discovering her artistic side since joining a creative therapy group at a Weymouth day hospice earlier this year.

After decades of believing she was ‘no good at art’ Violet has produced an array of colourful flower paintings, a beach scene, butterfly designs and helped to make a theatrical papier mache woman in a group project.

It is all thanks to the creative therapy sessions at the Trimar Day Hospice at Greenhill, run by Susie White and Debbie Elsmore.

Great-grandmother of two Violet began visiting the hospice every Thursday at the beginning of the year.

She said: “I’ve never done anything arty before – I didn’t even know I could.

“When I came here I said ‘I can’t paint or draw’ and they said ‘Just come to the table and we’ll help you’.

“I gave it a go and I’m really enjoying it now.

“My daughter Diana thinks it’s wonderful.”

Violet, who turns 98 in December this year, said the art and craft work had opened up a whole new world to her now that failing eyesight meant she could not read or write as much as she used to.

After ‘not wanting to come’ to the hospice in the first place, Violet now looks forward to her weekly visits.

She said: “I’d had cancer of the lungs and still have to go every so often for a check up and a nurse persuaded me to try coming here.

“When I take my artwork back to my residential home they say ‘Did you do this?’ As my eyesight’s fading, Debbie has been getting me on brighter colours and designs like flowers so I can see them better.

John Willoughby, 59, of Broadwey, who has been attending the day hospice’s weekly creative therapy group for about a year and a half, said the project was ‘a real laugh’.

He said: “What’s really nice about it is we came together as a group.

“What really makes it better for me is seeing people like Violet achieve things that they never thought they could do.”