The older masters

There is a particular stereotype of creative genius: that of the youthful prodigy of irrepressible talent.

Unlike a surgeon or a politician, the artist is not expected to accumulate years of knowledge and experience before assuming their role. You could say one does not become but rather is born an artist.

Yet history offers plenty of counter-examples. The French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau worked as a toll-and-tax collector until picking up a paintbrush in his 40s. Alfred Wallis, a British West Country fisher, started painting and drawing in his 70s. American folk artist Grandma Moses began producing her New England landscapes at 76; growing so popular that at the age of 93, she featured on the cover of Time magazine.

These late bloomers are often described as "naive" or "outsider" artists, rather patronising terms used to describe people with no formal artistic training. But they have also been recognised for their work's originality and virtuosity, showing that new beginnings are always possible.

London-based Libby Heaney, whose exhibition Heartbreak and Magic opens at Somerset House, London, in February, says art was her favourite subject in school. "But because I come from a very working-class background, my teachers and family advised me to study something they considered 'more serious' at university instead, which was theoretical physics with German," she says.

Heaney quickly doubted her choice but didn't have the funds to start over. So she resolved to specialise in quantum physics, undertaking a PhD followed by five years of post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. She kept making art in her spare time, although she considered it more as an enriching "hobby".

As a quantum physicist, she received prizes, and published some 20 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. But throughout this period she was also "gradually saving up enough money to go back to university to study art".