This is Lyla, our beautiful 12 year old daughter and for as long as we can remember she has always loved nothing more than drawing, something she has continued to develop as the years have gone by, perfecting her craft as she creates detailed intricate scenes from what appears to be an unlimited pool of her imagination.

Last year Lyla was dealt an unfathomably cruel health diagnosis when it was discovered she had an incredibly rare form of kidney cancer, a papillary renal cell carcinoma (which Lyla thought sounded like a very bad taco filling), a cancer which is especially rare in children. Thankfully this was spotted at an early stage and after being scooped up by the incredible specialist oncology team in Grenoble Lyla received a radical nephrectomy which included the removal of one entire kidney, surrounding areas and 25 lymph nodes. Lyla then suffered from post-op complications which resulted in further emergency surgery to try and help the function of her remaining kidney, sadly this didn’t work and Lyla now has half of one kidney working.

All pretty life changing and unfair for anyone to deal with, let alone an 11 year old girl. But through all this Lyla has just been Lyla, unbelievably brave and accepting of the situation and unwaveringly stoical and positive and a constant source of inspiration, focusing on the future and just wishing to enjoy living her life to the full as a now 12 year old girl.

Throughout her time in hospital and at home in recovery Lyla would often turn to her own form of therapy, art. The prints available on this site were all produced over and around this time and have been scanned direct from the pages of her sketchbooks.

The purpose of this website is to share Lyla’s artwork whilst raising awareness of her case and also raising funds for charitable causes. 100% of profits will go to charity. Each print is being reproduced using archival inks and on Hahnemühle paper (beautiful german printing paper) and will be signed by Lyla. The overall cost of each individual print will be approximately 6 euros therefore for each print sold approximately 14 euros will go to charity. The campaign will run through JustGiving* and you can also donate to the causes through there, as little or as much as you’d like.

*Due to the rarity of Lyla's case we are still establishing the link with an appropriate charity and research body where the funds will be best served. All this information will be provided along with Lyla's JustGiving page, on which you will be able to see exactly where your donations are going.

Thanks for reading and enjoying Lyla’s art!