A MUM has turned the home she shares with her teenage daughters into a gallery of her artwork.

Naomi Boyle has transformed her two-bedroom former council house in Brunswick Walk, Gravesend, for an exhibition of her photography next Friday and Saturday (May 8).

The 39-year-old has got rid of most of her furniture, installed new lighting and painted the walls white to hang photos of her daughters Robyn, 17, and Connie, 15, posing in derelict surroundings.

She says the themes of the photographs are finding beauty in urban decay and documenting the tough life of single-parent families, and the exhibition is a project for her art and design degree.

Miss Boyle, who works at the Sure Start children’s centre in Cedar Avenue, said: “I knew I had to put an exhibition on for the course and decided I wanted to something big and different.

“I started clearing out the house two months ago and we have been doing the painting in fits and starts, and it has all come together.

“After the exhibition, I’ll enjoy the empty space for a while and then we’ll start thinking about decorating again.”

Miss Boyle says her daughters were resistant to posing for the photos and transforming the house at first, but are now excited about the exhibition.

Connie said: “I am very proud of my mum and her work even if I sometimes don’t understand the meaning behind the pictures.

“I really hope people appreciate her work because she has worked so hard to make the exhibition happen.”

Examiners from Rochester University for the Creative Arts, where Miss Boyle is in the final year of her foundation degree, will attend the exhibition.

She has also invited friends and family, as well as representatives from Gravesham Council, as she says one aim of the show is to “flag up that there is no decent art space in Gravesend”.

Miss Boyle’s boyfriend Simon Young, 43, and her family and friends have helped her transform the house, keeping the cost of the makeover down to around just £200.

She said: “They have all been very supportive and I know they are proud of what I’m doing.”

Miss Boyle moved to Gravesend when she was 10 and says she was inspired to become an artist by seeing her father Michael paint, draw and take photographs.

The retired policeman died of a brain haemorrhage aged 47, when Miss Boyle was just 20, but she says he would have been very proud of her for carrying on his love of art.

She said: “I know he would have been behind me 100 per cent on this.”

Miss Boyle will find out what grade she has got for the exhibition in a month and hopes to use the work she has created as a springboard to a career as an artist.