JO SUNSHINE

First published: March 2026

After losing her sight in a car crash, Scottish artist Jo Sunshine brought colour and light back into her world in the only way she knew how

Picking up a paintbrush, Jo Sunshine thought that she might as well try using it. Like her father, she used to draw friends in the pub when she was younger. She would also paint murals or make art to give away. But she had given up a long time ago. She was 48 years old when her life was wrecked, alongside her car which span out of control and flipped over on the M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland. “At least nobody else was hurt” , she says. But she still doesn’t remember what happened.

Sunshine in her bedroom-studio in 2025; photo: George Wright

What she does know is that months of rehabilitation turned into years of grey uncertainty. Her busy, bright days of working four jobs and drawing pictures of her friends in the pub were over. She endured two brain surgeries and was declared legally blind. She resigned herself to spending her days indoors, or carefully tapping her way to the local shop with her white cane – until several years later, in 2014. Sunshine was born Joan Anderson in 1958, and grew up in Edinburgh. Her father had been an army captain during World War II and went on to become an accountant. Her mother stayed at home.

George Street in Glasgow, 2024

“We didn’t even have a picture up in the house – not one. In my room, I had Marc Bolan and Slade posters on the wall. But we had no art in the house at all. They had brass monkeys, I remember, and a wee wooden boat. And mum liked her Doulton China,” says Sunshine. She goes on, “My dad was an alcoholic. He was always in the pub and he liked to draw people in the pub. He did teach me a wee bit. But my mum’s not [creative].” Sunshine describes her home as a “war zone” with her parents not getting along. Things got worse when, as a teenager, she began to go out partying: “I’d always had my freedom but as I grew up they took it away.”