By Betsy Everett

THERE’S a stillness about Judith Bromley. Anybody more at ease in her own space, whether the beautiful Askrigg home which is also her studio and gallery, or the hills and moorland that rise above it and which have been her delight and artistic inspiration for four decades, would be hard to imagine.

Her husband is Robert Nicholls (Nik) also a gifted artist whose work perfectly complements her own: his mammals and birds inhabiting her stunning landscapes of moorland and peat bog and northern skies. In a brief summary of their life together, deeply rooted in the village community, Judith writes in the introduction to her latest exhibition, Climb up to the Moor:

“We have been living in Wensleydale as professional artists for nearly forty years, expressing through our work our deep love of the countryside, and selling our paintings, prints and books to a wide range of clientele.”

On view at Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar, until April, and featuring 73 original paintings, the touring exhibition was launched two years ago at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes. It has proved hugely popular at its northern venues – Richmond, Settle, Clitheroe Castle, Brockhole in the Lake District among them – and in August next year will be displayed in North London’s largest conference space, The Light at the Friends’ House in Euston Road.

But before that, at the end of January, the bids they have invited for the paintings throughout the tour will be in – and Judith will once more start painting, to fill the gaps that the sold work will inevitably leave in the display.

“I can’t wait,” she says. “It will be wonderful to paint again after two years without picking up a brush. My painting defines me; it’s my passion. It’s not what I do, so much as what I am.” And thereby, as they say, hangs a tale.

For the past two years, as well as assembling and dismantling the exhibition, moving it from venue to venue, running craft workshops associated with it to give people as deep an appreciation of the landscape as her own, trying to publicise it in a world more interested in unmade beds and dead sharks than in ecology and love of the earth, Judith, who is in her early 70s, has experienced real adversity, two serious eye operations and painfully torn ligaments in an ankle being the least of it.

In August 2012, a month after launching Climb up to the Moor, Nik’s mother, Ellen Nicholls, died aged 104. For more than 30 years they had visited and cared for her and although clearly not unexpected, her death was nevertheless a sadness.

Still, they would now have more time for themselves and their work, as Ellen herself had so dearly wished for them. It was not to be. The most devastating blow was yet to fall when in December that year, their much-loved and widely respected son-in-law, Dr Derek Keilloh, was struck off the medical register for alleged neglect of his duties in relation to an Iraqi detainee at an Army base in Basra, nine years previously.

The effect on Judy, Nik and the family, even more bewildered by the horrific turn of events than were the thousands of friends and patients who subsequently supported him, was overwhelming. Apart from the emotional turmoil there were petitions to be raised, letters to write, pleas to be made to government, MPs, and the General Medical Council. All to no avail; and though the storm has passed, it has left in its wake a trail of devastation.

“But we have to move on, and to be able to lose myself again in my work will be a blessing,” says Judith.

The exhibition has been well-received everywhere, not least for its incorporation of a unique installation, Ground Cover, to which visitors, friends, relations and community groups have all been able to contribute.

“We ask people to look at the paintings and photographs of the moorland and to respond in their own way. We give them a template and each person can make up to five small pieces, representing grass, mosses, heather, bogs, snow, puddles, stones – anything that speaks of these wild places that are so vital to the ecology of the Dales. It’s now known, for example, that peat bogs are more efficient than rain forests for carbon capture and storage.”

Judith has been bowled over by the response. People have crafted small, jewel-like templates using beading, embroidery, felting, knitting, crochet, rag-rugging, fused glass, even real fossils, all representing the elements of the moorland: stones and grasses, streams and puddles, snow, lichen and mosses. Ground Work now covers an area around 15ft square, and is still growing.

“Every so often another little jewel will come through the post with a note telling me what it represents and how much they’ve enjoyed doing it. I am passionate about saving this beautiful legacy for future generations and it’s wonderful to be able to express it not just through my art but hopefully by inspiring others,” says Judith.

Climb up to the Moor is at the Kirkleatham Museum, Kirkleatham, Redcar, TS10 5NW, until April. Admission free. Call 01642 479500 for opening hours and directions.