Throughout August, Yore Mill Gallery located at the beautiful Aysgarth Falls sees an exciting and unique exhibition of work by its co-owner Julie Edwardson.

Julie studied Fine Art at Newcastle and spent her working life in the North-East as an inspirational art teacher. Throughout this time Julie was always creating work inspired by the environment of the Northumberland coast.

On leaving teaching, Julie has started to develop her own practice and had a studio space in North Shields with the Bank Studio Group and was involved in solo and group exhibitions.

Julie now lives in the Yorkshire Dales and is fulfilling a lifelong ambition to own and run a gallery, which she does with her partner. The move has moved Julie’s work in exciting new directions across a range of mediums.

'Childhood Memories' evolved from Julie’s experiences during lockdown. The experience of being cut off from the outside world with her mother ill in hospital seemed to conjure powerful emotions of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

The idiosyncrasies of the family unit are portrayed in a series of oil paintings and mono prints.

Attitudes towards The Child at school and treasured childhood possessions all come together in this eclectic mix of images that may spark something in the viewers’ memory.

Julie uses found materials to evoke memory such as vintage fabrics combined with methods and media such as collage, surface texture, and crayon-like oil bars. Julie builds layers into the paint similar to the layering of memory.

Julie said: “The things we remember are the things that form us, however don’t forget the things we choose to focus on, those things that seemed once important to us, may be false.”

The exhibition will also have some of Julie’s possessions from her childhood. There will also be music from the 1970s.

The exhibition is on until August 31 at Yore Mill Gallery, Church Bank, Aysgarth, and is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, from 10.30am to 4.30pm, and on Sunday, Monday and Friday, 11am to 4.30pm.

For more information, see www.yoremillcraftshopandgallery.co.uk.