SINCE returning to England following the death of her artist husband in California, Jenny Morten has been working to re-establish her career as a potter.

This included a two-week exhibition at the Station, in Richmond, the town where the couple lived for several years before moving to Darlington.

"I probably shouldn't have gone to America, but I don't regret it," she said.

From Sea to Shire featured her latest ceramics alongside paintings and prints by her husband, Geoff, some referencing memories of Stanhope Park in Darlington, his childhood in Boroughbridge and an expressive picture linking the US to one of his favourite spots in Teesdale.

Jenny was well-known as a ceramic artist before the couple emigrated. Many of her designs based on natural forms have been reinforced and refined by the experience of living in an earthquake zone beside the Pacific Ocean.

After deciding to return to return to England, she stuck a pin in a map of Yorkshire to find a place to live. "I wanted to be near York, where Geoff and I met at art college," she said.

"A large part of my life has been lived near the sea, so when the pin stuck on Bridlington it seemed right. I love walking along the beach and picking things up and taking photos of rock pools."

Some ceramics resemble fossils or are etched like marks on rocks. Others have the delicacy of shells, including the flat sand dollar she sometimes found on the Pacific coast.

Stripes are a recurring motif, inspired by hosta plants she grew in her backyard in Darlington. Diagonal lines were prompted by noticing how wind-blown moss dries on stone walls. In the desert, she saw massive upheavals of land left by quakes which reinforced her fascination with strata as a design element.

Having successfully reapplied for membership of the Craft Potters Association she will exhibit in Ceramics in York over the weekend of September 11-13 as part of the reopening of the refurbished York Art Gallery. She is also excited at having three pieces accepted for the CPA's own exhibition in London in August.

"I feel I am finally getting in with the big boys," she said.

The couple's son Matt designed and manages his parents' websites, jennymorten.com and geoffmorten.com, helps choose pictures to compliment pots, shares the task of hanging exhibitions and produces artwork for posters and invitation cards.

The exhibition in the Station's mezzanine gallery was arranged in part to rekindle friendships from the time she and Geoff lived in Richmond after moving from London with the intention of expanding the Jenny Morten Pottery.

They took on nine employees and trained them, but eventually sold up and moved to Darlington to have more time for their own creative work.

Geoff's small-scale studies of Stanhope Park were motivated by sights seen from his upper floor studio window at night. If Darlington Borough Council still has an acquisitions policy, despite no longer having a gallery, it is works such as these it should be purchasing.

"When we moved to California, he had to put his life and career down on the application for a visa which made him go back to his childhood and his work became more autobiographical," Jenny recalled.

One painting, Saturday Night, Bread and Crosses, was inspired by memories of the bakery in Boroughbridge where Geoff worked as a boy and the family tradition was to put ten large tin loaves out in a special place on a Saturday night for poor of the parish to collect on Sunday morning.

Meeting of the Waters references the place at Greta Bridge, made famous by Turner, where Geoff enjoyed fishing. It shows a figure reaching out from sand-hot shades in California across the sea to cool blues and greens of England.

"Geoff used to say, wherever you are, even in the middle of California, all of a sudden, a sensation, a smell or a sight, will recall Greta Bridge. There is a lot of meaning in there."