MEDIHA Ting has decided to make a living from her paintings after losing her job in a recent cull.

Art graduate Ms Ting is one of thousands of City employees who has already been shaken from banking by the financial crisis.

The 33-year-old, whose first love has always been art, says she "stumbled into banking" in 2001. "When I graduated it was very difficult to get a job related to art. A friend said 'this bank is hiring' so I tried and got the job."

Three weeks ago her career came to an abrupt end when the investment bank she had worked for over the past five years made her redundant. She said: "I got my notice and we got five minutes to get out of the building. It was the third round of redundancies."

She had been working part-time in risk control, earning the full-time equivalent of a salary of £32,000 while trying to work out how to make a career as a contemporary artist. Now she says at last she has the opportunity.

Belgian-born Ms Ting, who lives in Becontree, already has an exhibition of her work in Shanghai next summer and is trying to get funding for a tour of Irish and Chinese artists to Dublin, Beijing, Liverpool and London.

She has painted a series of London nightscapes entitled Fragmented London and says on her website her philosophy is "I paint and therefore I am".

Looking back on banking she says: "I never really enjoyed it but it was better pay than other part-time jobs. I had always planned to go into art full-time. It's not brillian timing because of the economy. A lot of the people who buy art are bankers. But I think I can make a living."

Ms Ting, who was educated in Hong Kong and California, also has an MA from Birkbeck College.

She has exhibited at a number of British venues including the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester and the Bow Arts Trust. Her first job was with the Taiwanese bank Hua Nan Commercial Bank but she also worked for HSBC and UBS in the City before her most recent job.

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