An artist who is one of the longest surviving kidney transplant patients has paid tribute to the family who have allowed her to "keep colouring in" into her eighth decade.

Alexandra "Sandie" Gardner, whose paintings have been snapped up by the likes of actor Jeremy Irons, said she wanted to speak out for herself and on behalf of all the patients whose lives have been improved or saved by a transplant.

Sandie was told by doctors that it was unlikely she would see 60.

Now, at the age of 71, she will open her first solo exhibition today in five years in Glasgow, 25 years after she got the new kidney she christened 'Roger the Lodger'.

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"When you get your transplant you don't get the opportunity to thank the family who at a seriously difficult time in their lives have agreed to let you have part of their loved one, " she says.

"You do feel a responsibility to the people who have allowed you to do this.

"I would hate them to think that we didn't care, those of whom have received a transplant.

"Without that family making that decision at such an difficult time, there wouldn't be anything here in this gallery. I wouldn't be here.

"I just keep on colouring in, thanks to these good folk."

Born at the end of the second world war, Sandie was brought up in Cambuslang in a traditional working class family. She showed an "extraordinary" aptitude for drawing and painting from an early age and went on to study and teach at the Glasgow School of Art.

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However at the age of 37 she was diagnosed with kidney failure, a condition that had gone undetected from birth.

By then, a successful, well established artist and mother of two children, Lin and Jamie, the diagnosis was stark.

She says: "The doctor said, you have got about seven years and your kidneys will pack in altogether and you will be on dialysis. And they got it to the exact week."

She opted for peritoneal dialysis, which could be done at home, through a tube in her stomach.

She says: "I just hated it. My daughter always says she could see it in my face. I took up sculpture at the time so I could sit down.

"I was on dialysis for a year then I got the first transplant and my body rejected it after eight months.

"Then I was on dialysis for another year, then I got 'Roger the Lodger.'

"I thought that maybe if I gave him a name and a personality, he would stick with me this time.

"I had to stop teaching because of the renal failure but it doesn't stop you from being a painter.

"The biggest treat after having a transplant was being able to have a bath because if you are doing peritoneal dialysis you can only allow the water up to a certain level so I could luxuriate in a bath up to my chin."

The transplant also freed her to paint unrestricted by dialysis. Her latest exhibition includes a series of intimate portraits of a woman, over the course of a year, during which her mother dies.

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Another nude was commission by a woman who wanted to feel more comfortable in her own skin. The series is intermingled with some scenes of Glasgow, where she lives, and a still life painting of a pair of Manola Blahnik designer shoes that is still wet when we meet.

Her favourite work in the collection is a painting of Jesus on the cross, which took more than two years to complete and was done "completely for herself."

On her motivation to paint, she has said: "Art gives a quality to life. People need something to lift them up and out of the day to day issues, the poverty, the misery, the horrors and the drudgery."

Sandie, who is grandmother to Alex, 12 and Matty, 10, and whose paintings sell for tens of thousands, says she is supportive of a change to a system of presumed consent for organ donation, which the Evening Times is campaigning for in Scotland.

She says: "I think it would make more sense is we had a system where everyone was a donor unless they carried a card which said they didn't want to be a donor.

"You get a lot of stupid comments from people, 'but what if I'm in a coma and I'm not really dead and they remove my kidneys'. And I just think, don't be so daft."

She said: "When you didn't really want to talk about it before because I didn't want my transplant to define me.

"I'm an artist who has had a kidney transplant and not the other way around.

"However, without the transplant this definition would not exist.

"Every year when I celebrate when I celebrate another year of Roger the Lodger, I think that there is another family out there having opposite thoughts and I'm aware of that.

"I think it's so wonderful that they give people like me a chance."

The exhibition 'Gardner' opens today at the Leiper Gallery, 118 West George Street. www.leiperfineart.com

Sign the organ donor register at https://www.organdonationscotland.org/