Zillah Bell Gallery, Thirsk

ALONGSIDE its summer show of work by regular exhibitors, the gallery devotes two rooms to pictures, prints and ceramics by the wellknown Dales artist Deirdre Borlase, touching on her prodigious output over several decades.

Now in her eighties, retired from painting and living near York, she was for many years based in the Wensleydale village of Carperby, where her cottage and garden were a source of delight.

Domestic interiors and riotous planting, depicted in rapturous colours in both oils and watercolours, indicate home was where her heart lay, but the etchings show her eye roamed far, while her hand was ever ready to turn to different techniques.

Born in London, she graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1946, taught art in schools and married the artist Fred Brill.

Widowed early after having raised a family, she began developing her own artistic leanings across a wide range of subjects matter and genres, though perhaps none more consistently than her own home.

These paintings are characterised by vitality and warmth in freely applied swathes and dashes of bright tones, with a sense of playfulness in decorative patterning, objects tightly packed and figurative, often with quirky distortion amid jugs of flowers, bowls of fruit and clashing soft furnishings, usually with a cat somewhere smugly ensconced.

Her etchings are more disciplined and in terms of fine line, with gatherings of deftly drawn figures, and an eye for humour, as in Fun Run, depicting rain-soaked spectators in muted shades, a distinct contrast to Umbrellas in San Marco, in which over-painted paper collage adds depth, colour and interest.

Compare also the curlicues of Venetian architecture with the straight lines of sombre Settle.

The one sensitive study of a young woman does not to full justice to Borlase’s reputation as a portraitist, though her love of animals is evident in simple sketches on brightly glazed ceramics.

The exhibition continues until August 23.