Artist's satirical tourism posters urge people to stay away from Yorkshire's beauty spots

Like most creative people, Ilkley-based artist Helen Brayshaw has been finding ways to fill her time productively during the lockdown. However, she could not have foreseen the response to a series of pictures she created one evening for the amusement of her family and friends.

“I was twiddling my thumbs and, inspired by Owen Williams’ #Don’t Visit Wales Challenge on Twitter, I thought I would have a go at a travel poster after reports of groups of people still travelling to the Dales despite the restrictions,” she explains.

Having made one, she got into her stride and created a few more. The images were of well-known beauty spots in Yorkshire – such as the Cow and Calf rocks, Malham Cove, Ribbleshead Viaduct – with witty and forceful messages (some not suitable for a family newspaper, but very funny) for people to stay away, within the context of the current social distancing rules.

“It was just a bit of fun really, I put them up on Facebook and I woke up the next day to find they had already been shared 3,000 times, now they have had over 12,000 shares,” says Brayshaw. “I was a bit surprised by that, my first thought was that I would have taken a bit more care over them – I had just rattled them off on my phone, they weren’t particularly polished – but they seem to have captured people’s imagination.”

Since then she has worked on the images further and with the help of graphic designer Justin Leeming she has created five limited edition A4 prints available to buy for £20 each, with all the profits from sales going to the NHS and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. So far she has raised £750 with orders coming in from as far away as Texas and Nova Scotia.

The posters are a new departure for Brayshaw who completed an MA in Fine Arts at the University of Leeds in 2016. “I mainly do still life oil paintings and liquid acrylic abstracts,” she says. “At the moment to eke out my paint supplies I have been diluting them with water and experimenting with applying pigment in liquid form. I’ve created some semi-abstract landscapes of the moorland around Ilkley and beyond. I call them ‘Moor Pours.’”

In 2017 one of her still life oil paintings Halved Avocado was displayed at the Open Exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery as part Hull’s tenure as UK City of Culture. The piece was spotted by Prince Charles and Camilla while they were on an official visit to the gallery and they liked it so much they bought it. “I’m still known locally as ‘the avocado lady’,” says Brayshaw.

Last year she helped to set up a new artspace in Ilkley, the Solar Gallery, located in the upper floor of the town’s historic Manor House Museum to raise money for its upkeep. “There is a collective of about 30 artists involved and there are six of us on the planning team,” she says. “The idea is to stage an exhibition every three months in the gallery which is open at weekends.”

At the moment that project, like so much else, is on hold but in the meantime, Brayshaw is continuing to make and send out her posters. “It’s certainly given me something to do during lockdown,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as busy in my life.”

To purchase prints contact helen.brayshaw@icloud.com

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