Painter’s help for peaks’ battered pathways

For the coming two months, Ilkley pastel artist Lucia Smith is showing some of her Three Peaks and Moor collection and will donate 30 per cent commission on any sales to the Three Peaks Project.

This has been set up to enlist the help of people who visit Ingleborough, Penyghent and Whernside, as well as those who live or work around them, to help protect and enhance the area and the rights of way network into the future.

Lucia, who is a corporate member, says: “In my search to find more moorland contours with which to play, in the last two years I’ve ‘rediscovered’ the Three Peaks area for myself – and revelled in their familiarity and grandeur.

“A recent 50th birthday was marked by climbing each of them individually, taking time to breathe in the scenery, with the resulting collection of work.”

Her exhibition is at the Yoredale offices of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. She will also run a Community Art Project Day for the Ilkley Manor House on July 9. The Friends of the Three Peaks enables individuals or organisations to commit to longer-term support for the authority’s work through annual donations ring-fenced for work on the Three Peaks. See www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/threepeaks for a form, and return it with a cheque made payable to “Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority” and marked on the reverse “Friends of the Three Peaks”.