Kitty North: One of Yorkshire's best known artists talks about her latest exhibition at Salts Mill

Her paintings told the story of Salts Mill from its 19th century origins to the present day, and now she returns with a new exhibition, Continuum, that charts her own artistic journey.

North’s work is inspired by the rural Yorkshire landscape in which she lives and works, and the cavernous gallery is a fitting place to display the big, bold vistas that have become her calling card.

At the heart of this retrospective exhibition, which features more than 100 paintings and drawings in oil, acrylic, watercolour and charcoal, are a group of 16 oil paintings that she has worked on over the course of the last 20 years.

These six-foot paintings are a nod to John Constable’s famous ‘six-footers’ – including The Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows – with which he made his name at the Royal Academy. He, too, was in thrall to the landscape, though for him it was the bucolic Suffolk countryside rather than Yorkshire’s hills and meadows.

North’s colour-soaked canvasses take the viewer into a world of peaks and hamlets, and farmhouses set amidst swirling skies, mesmerising suns and beguiling moons.

Her paintings are a kind of visual love letter to rural Yorkshire life though there’s nothing saccharine about them.

“There’s a very clear start and end to certain images; a response to a particular place, day, moment in nature, capturing the changing weather and seasons. But with these huge oil paintings, it’s completely different. When I stand back and look at them, I can feel the two decades that it took me to create them – the layers of paint, the passage of time, building on the canvas. They have a real weight to them,” she says.

These large oils are the product of what, at times, has been a long and arduous process.

“You make a start and then you get to a point where something’s not quite right so you leave it and then you’re drawn back to it. I think you’ve just got to follow your gut and your instinct with art. It’s about recognising there’s something there to work on so you just keep going," says North.

It almost sounds like a metaphor for life. Though she points out that not all the works in the exhibition have taken so long.

“The drawings and some of the smaller paintings were done quite quickly.”

North loves working en plein air (in the open) and can often be found painting on the village green in Arncliffe, where she lives, or halfway up a hill surrounded by Belted Galloways and hardy Dales sheep.

“I love to be outside in the village recording whatever comes across the village green, or up on a hillside feeling the elements and trying to translate them into paint," she says.

She works throughout the year taking everything the weather gods can throw at her.

“Painting on a summer’s day is easy. You’re in your T-shirt and shorts and it looks wonderful, whereas the really bad weather and the drama of it all is exciting but it’s more challenging. But I think you’ve got to have a go at it all.

“You’ve got no control over it. When you’re up in the Dales it can be pretty wild. It can be pouring with rain and the wind can be howling, but I like the drama of it. No wonder so many writers and artists have been inspired by it,” she says.

“It takes being up in the Dales to make us realise how small we are and I think that’s why so many people like going there, they’re trying to connect with something bigger than themselves. That’s the joy of painting in nature, you’re constantly taking your lead from something greater than yourself.”

North has her favourite spots that she’s drawn to repeatedly, such as Bolton Abbey, Ingleborough and certain farmhouses that she knows like the back of her hand.

“I go off and paint other places but there’s something that keeps drawing me back,” she says.

It’s been said that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned, so when does she know when to stop?

“There are some of my white paintings that were done quite quickly in the snow and that’s it, you’ve said what you wanted to say. Whereas others have been built up over time and once you get rid of the extraneous elements of life you’re left with this essential place, or story – a farm perhaps, or a figure walking in the hills.

“It’s that urge to be creative but it’s also about taking risks and thinking ‘what happens if I do this?’, ‘is it getting better?’ and ‘am I improving it?’ You owe it to yourself as an artist to give it a go and if it goes wrong then you move on to something else.”

Kitty North grew up in Kirkby Lonsdale, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It was at the age of 12, whilst painting a view of Ingleborough from a window in her home, that she realised she would spend her life being an artist. “That was a defining moment for me. It wasn’t particularly good, but I just knew this was what I wanted to do.”

In 1980 she plunged into London, attending Chelsea School of Art, where her peers included Ralph Fiennes, followed by further study in Brighton and Manchester.

North has made her name through her bright, visceral landscapes but is always looking at ways of upping her skills.

“I was on an art course in Florence in February for three weeks. I hadn’t worked in charcoal for years but they had the most beautiful charcoal and that got me back into drawing black and white images. It was a portrait course and I learned quite a lot. I think every time you do something different you learn something new.”

She turned 60 this year and there’s the inevitable sense of self-reflection that comes with such a personal landmark and the inexorable passage of time.

“It’s strange because I’m not that person who started off many of these paintings. I wouldn’t paint them the same way if I did them now, they would be different.

"Our experiences make all of us who we are and you learn from them as you go along. My mum’s a good example of that. She’s 83 and every day she gets up and embraces it and goes off on a little adventure, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”

The paintings and drawings in Continuum are available to buy and you sense the exhibition represents a symbolic turning of the page for North as she moves on to a new chapter in her life.

“It seems pretty crazy, frankly, spending 20 years on a painting,” she says.

“Usually when you have an exhibition it’s work you’ve done quite recently, but this is different because it covers a longer period and it’s like looking at your own life, which feels a bit weird.

“I feel a bit overwhelmed by some of the paintings. I don’t know if it’s because they’re quite powerful or because of the journey I’ve been on with them. I hope it’s not just the latter.

“I’m really interested in what people think of them. I’ve had my life with them and now it’s time for other people to enjoy them.”

Kitty North has been living and working in Yorkshire for more than 30 years now, with her work widely exhibited and collected around the world.

Continuum is on display in Gallery 2, Salts Mill, Saltaire, until April 14, 2024.