DAUGHTER of a master mariner, Margaret Shields developed a taste for painting ships and seascapes by going to meet her father when he arrived home in port and by sometimes taking short voyages.

Born and brought up in Middlesbrough, her interest in art was stimulated by her mother's taking her to galleries in every port they visited. After leaving school, she attended Middlesbrough College of Art where fellow students included the now distinguished artists Len Tabner, William Tillyer and Dave Mulholland.

There followed three years at the Royal Academy of Music in London before jobs as a display artist, freelance graphic artist and costume design and scenery painting at Middlesbrough Theatre.

Her first solo exhibition was at Billingham Art Gallery. She created murals for public buildings in Stockton and Middlesbrough and later a painting for civic presentation to Cleveland's Twin Town in Poland, Stettin. In 1977, she won first prize in the Queen's Silver Jubilee Painting Competition, organised by Cleveland Council, and met the Queen.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s her style became imaginative, sometimes surrealist or fantastic, but in the mid-1990s she returned to her observational roots while retaining an element of fantasy and strangeness in her work.

Today, living close to the seafront at Saltburn, she can see ships passing at the bottom of the street.

Subjects for her paintings include the mouth of the River Tees, ships crossing the bay, including ferries, tankers, ore ships and bulk carriers, coasters, local fishing craft and oil industry vessels.

These pictures usually contain figures, playing, riding, collecting sea coal or seaweed, or struggling along the beach against a storm.

Townscapes produced over many years often examine the clash of old and new in modern conurbations and record momentous changes in British urban life from her own highly individualistic point of view.

Both themes, town and sea, are the focus of her latest exhibition, It’s like this ... , on show at the Zillah Bell Gallery in Thirsk until May 9.