COLOUR sings from every vertical surface in the main space at Zillah Bell Gallery in Thirsk as sunny scenes and striking paintings, prints and ceramics bounce the visitor’s gaze around the gallery as if caught in a pinball machine.

The summer exhibition, which continues until August 27, includes work by artists represented by the gallery several of whom are local to the region.

Margaret Shields has lived in the North-East her entire life and appears to have drunk in the sea air. Daughter of a master mariner, she would meet her father’s ships in port and occasionally take short voyages with him.

Now she creates observational depictions of life in and around her hometown of Saltburn. From North Sea Ferries to ice-cream vans, ordinary scenes are imbued with an element of fantasy and sometimes strangeness. Shields’ works are not easy on the eye, they contain a sense of struggling, of graft, of odds being against the human figures that punctuate her impasto picture planes.

Similarly atmospheric, yet starkly contrasting, are Peter Hicks’ dappled, large-scale acrylic on canvas landscape paintings. It comes as little surprise to learn that Hicks lives in Danby, deep in the North York Moors, where he sketches outdoors capturing fleeting relationships between weather and landscape.

There is an awe-inspiring, romantic physicality interwoven into subject matter and technique. Hicks achieves seemingly accidental marks and textures using long-handled brushes, working with his support flat on the floor, manipulating and embracing the ways in which thin glazes of acrylic, sand deposits and other materials pool and dry.

Debbie Loan, from Easingwold, uses layers of paint and found materials to magnificent effect creating landscapes that almost leave one’s cheek burning with the sensation of driving wind and rain.

Coming from a largely agricultural background, she states: "I am constantly challenged to create work which acknowledges the romantic splendour of the northern landscape, while at the same time being conscious that my work is rooted in the daily practicalities of rural life.”

Sam Snowden, from York, creates large-scale, vibrant oil paintings that take the viewer of a journey into abstract external landscapes married with internal emotional spaces. The surface of these canvases are systematically scraped back and rebuilt, revealing vivid relationships between colours and the painterly marks.

Other notable local artists in this visual feast of an exhibition include Jane Burnley, from Thirsk, and Lesley Birch, of York.

Sarah Mayhew Craddock