Video: Getting the (Bolton) Abbey habit

THE weather, as often is the case these days, doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.

The dappled sunlight which accompanied the drive over from Leeds has been replaced by dark, racing clouds and clinging drizzle that has thrown a damp blanket over this southerly edge of the Yorkshire Dales.

It’s certainly more of an Ashley Jackson sky than the kind you might find in one of Kitty North’s rich, colour-saturated paintings. Kitty is artist in residence at nearby Bolton Abbey and has an exhibition here in the plush surroundings of The Devonshire Arms.

“I’ve been painting in this area for 24 years so it’s very familiar to me and it’s lovely to have an exhibition so close rather than in a gallery miles away,” she says.

Kitty, who turns 50 this summer, is a successful landscape artist best known for her intense, at times dreamlike, paintings with their tranches of thick colour and echoes of Turner and Cezanne.

The paintings in her latest exhibition, which runs until the end of October, are all of the Dales. “The starting point is Bolton Abbey and then it moves out to the surrounding communities, places like Grassington, Burnsall and Littondale.

“That’s the Cavendish Pavillion,” she says, pointing to one of her paintings on the wall. “And that’s a barn on the way to Arncliffe and here you see a farmhouse on the Bolton Abbey estate,” she says, pointing out two more.

Most of her paintings start life outdoors and are usually finished in her studio. Some can take up to 10 years to finish, although with as many as 30 works in progress at any one time she’s anything but ponderous.

She disagrees with Picasso’s maxim that a painting is never finished, only abandoned.

“For me there’s a point when something’s finished, it just may take a long time.”

Being artist in residency has given her licence to roam the 30,000 acre estate at Bolton Abbey. “Turner painted here on the edge of the River Wharfe and what I particularly like about the estate is the way it rises on both sides,” she says.

“It’s a unique landscape. The way the River Wharfe moves through the valleys and the stone walls criss-crossing the hills and the dales and little farm houses tucked away, it’s just incredibly beautiful. It’s like one giant garden.”

She often revisits the same spots but never tires of the scenery. “I go back to places all the time because the seasons change so dramatically. Look at it now compared to a few months ago when there was all that snow, it’s completely different.”

Kitty divides her time between Yorkshire and London, where she teaches and does masterclasses. Even when she’s down in London she finds herself drawn to the river. “I’ve been painting the Thames which is interesting because it’s very different from the River Wharfe,” she says.

As well as her oil paintings she also produces watercolours and prints and has started incorporating Lowry-like figures into her work. “I’ve gone back to figure painting which I haven’t really done for a long time and that focuses you on people.”

As an artist, she feels it’s important to push herself. “If you always do the same thing I think people get bored. Once you can do something well the challenge is to improve on that or go in a different direction. I’m not sure I really like change but sometimes I think it’s quite good for people.”

She’s been working in London with painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling. “She has been studying figure drawing for 50 years and to work with someone who just studies the figure, you realise that as a landscape painter you’ve got quite a lot to learn.”

It has helped add another dimension to her own work. “I find myself just sitting in a café in Grassington or Burnsall and drawing people in the street.”

Although not everyone, it seems, enjoys the attention. “I was drawing someone on a train between Leeds and Skipton the other day and he said ‘could you stop, I can’t relax with you drawing me.’ It surprised me a little, but because I’m drawing all the time now I start drawing anyone who sits down in front of me, whether they like it or not,” she says.

Although she has forged a close connection to Yorkshire over the years, she actually grew up across the Pennines in Kirkby Lonsdale. She went to school in the Lake District and wanted to be an artist from the age of 13 when she first painted Ingleborough from her bedroom window.

It was, she says, an idyllic place for a future landscape artist to grow up in. “It was a dreamy childhood spent jumping in and out of rivers, I was very fortunate,” she says.

Kitty studied fine art at Chelsea School of Art and later at Manchester University and Brighton University where Antony Gormley was among her tutors, and along the way she met such famous names as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

Her first Yorkshire exhibition, opened by Jonathon Silver, was at Harewood House in 1996 and since then she’s had work exhibited all over the world.

She now lives in Arncliffe, nestled between Littondale’s lush valley walls, a Dales village which has an interesting history. It’s where Charles Kingsley wrote his novel The Water Babies and is home to the original Woolpack pub used in the TV soap Emmerdale.

Despite its abundant charm and beauty, life in remote villages like this can be tough. “You’re 35 minutes from the nearest train station and it can get pretty wild up here. There used to be eight farming families here and now there are just three and they all have other full-time jobs to support their income.”

For visitors, though, the attractions are obvious and people travel from far and wide to sample this unique landscape. “I was painting one day near Bolton Abbey when I met a lady who’d come over from New Zealand to look at the stepping stones her mother was standing on, beneath the priory, which she’d seen in an old photograph. Her mother had died and she’d always wanted to come and see the place for herself.

“On another day I bumped into two Australian families looking to see where their parents originally came from in Yorkshire.”

Kitty has spent time living in Hong Kong and Australia, where her work is particularly popular. “It’s funny to think of my pictures hanging on people’s walls in Australia. It seems odd to have a painting of Bolton Abbey estate on an icy winter’s day with a solitary farmer feeding his sheep when you’re looking at blue skies and cockatoos outside. But at the same time I quite like the idea of it.”

She has painted Australia’s burnished landscape but at present it is London and Yorkshire, two very different settings, that are the focus of her creative attention.“Yes, the two parallel rivers of life I suppose, on one side surrounded by sheep and cows and on the other side by people.”

However, it’s the beguiling Yorkshire landscape that continually draws her back.“I love being surrounded by my own Yorkshire paintings, it’s very cosy instead of being on the edge of Elephant and Castle where it can be pretty rough.”

Either way, art for her is a way of making sense of the world. “Painting is a language that allows you to express the world you live in,” she says. “No one day is the same and it opens your eyes to something different. That’s the nature of looking and it’s what culture is all about.”

Kitty North Exclusive Preview Evening, with drinks reception and canapés, June 20, 5.30pm – 7.30pm. An opportunity for a limited number of Yorkshire Post readers to join Kitty and her friends at an exclusive preview evening at The Devonshire Arms Country House Hotel, Bolton Abbey. Additional paintings will be on display in the Cavendish Room as well as throughout The Devonshire Brasserie and Bar. To apply for complimentary tickets to the preview evening please call Oliver Moore 01756 718147 or email [email protected]

Friday June 21 11am – 4pm. The exhibition in the Cavendish Room is open to the public between 11am and 4pm, whilst the Devonshire Brasserie and Bar will showcase seasonal oils and watercolours by Kitty throughout the year.

Yorkshire Post readers who visit the exhibition are invited to enter a free prize draw to win a masterclass with Kitty. The winner will enjoy private tuition, painting outdoors and either lunch in the Brasserie or a picnic prepared by The Devonshire Arms.