A mother who lost her job two years ago is taking her first major step towards becoming the professional artist she has long wanted to be by having her works exhibited in the Winns Gallery next week.

Sharon Foster, a mother of two who lives in Forest Road, Walthamstow, had her last day of work as a council worker for Waltham Forest on June 6, 2011, and since then has been unsuccessfully looking for work in the art field.

She is now set to have 10 of her 3D sculptures on display at the exhibition which runs from May 29 until June 9.

She said: “I’ve been looking for work the whole time since I was made redundant, but this exhibition is going to be good for local people to be able to come and see what I have to offer – and maybe it will get me some work.”

Sharon, 57, who was a children’s centre coordinator for eight years but was made redundant as part of council savings, said she saw losing her job as an opportunity to get into the art world.

She realised that she realised she wanted to become an artist in 2006 and said that after losing her job she had hopes of doing freelance work, but that it had been harder than she thought.

Sharon spoke in 2011 of how taking up a college art course had been a new lease of life, and now she is having her work exhibited at the Winns Gallery as part of an exhibition entitled ‘3’, along with two other local artists, Linda Green and Jacqueline McFarlane.

Sharon, who volunteers at Waltham Forest College and the William Morris Gallery, completed a BTEC Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Waltham Forest College in 2011 and then went on to study further at Central St Martins College of Art and Design.

She said those courses were life changing opportunities and gave her the tools to create the kind of are she had always envisioned.

Despite not being in work, in 2012 she entered the E17 Art Trail, exhibited an oil painting at Leyton Gallery and won a Black History Month competition where her winning illustration was exhibited throughout Waltham Forest’s libraries.