Inspired by the landscape around her, North Yorkshire artist Sue Lawson is establishing a reputation for her paintings. She talks to Women's Editor Christen Pears.

SUE Lawson's idea of bliss is standing on a hillside in the middle of nowhere with a storm brewing around her. She doesn't notice the wind or the lashing rain. In fact, she is oblivious to everything except the darkening skies and the way the light suddenly breaks through the clouds.

"The light is fantastic. The way it changes is amazing," she enthuses. That enthusiasm shows in her paintings. Working in oils and pastels, she creates landscapes with an almost magnetic quality. Striking, often dark and brooding, they evoke more than just a place. There's feeling there too, a sense of wildness, the power of nature - and that's exactly what Sue wants.

"If the painting resonates something that's more than just a view, I feel I've succeeded with it," she says.

Sue is now 35 but her love of art can be traced back to her early years when, as an only child living near Selby, she used to occupy herself by drawing and painting. "I spent hours in the garden or walking across the fields, picking things up and bringing them back to draw them. I always had a pencil in my hand," she says.

It was no surprise that she chose to do a foundation course in art and design at York College of Technology, followed by a stint at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Simply Red lead singer Mick Hucknall, who had studied fine art there, used to pop in to see his former tutors. "It was a fantastic time. Everything was buzzing and I think I absorbed that," says Sue.

She continued painting, taking commissions to pay her way through college, but she focused on conceptual art. Fascinated by the ideas of celebrity and fans, the photographs of her student work show a pair of pyjamas decorated with singer Morrisey's face, a giant montage of pictures of the actor James Spader. There is her "famous artist food stuff" - cans with labels in the style of famous artists, including Gilbert and George macaroni cheese.

It is only in recent years that she has returned to her first love - painting. "It's taken a long time for my work to develop. I've been searching for years to find a language to describe what I see. Some people are there at 21 but it's taken me longer and I've had to work very hard at it."

A series of part time jobs, as well as a brief period as a journalist and a couple of years as a teacher helped to pay the bills but they took her energy away from what she wanted to do. It's only with both her son and daughter now at school full time that she's really been able to concentrate on her art, working from a studio in her home in Crakehall, near Bedale.

She takes her inspiration from the countryside around her - Masham, West Burton, Swaledale. "I avoided landscape paintings for a long time because I didn't think I could do it. I grew up in an area where intensive farming had destroyed the landscape. It was only when I moved here that I realised what the landscape was like and opened my mind up to it again. I can't imagine myself anywhere else."

Sue often works on location, starting a painting off outside before taking it back to her studio to complete. "It's like living in that Cadbury's Flake advert. You are in the poppy field painting and it's almost too good to be true."

Sue's partner Ian, an art teacher, makes the frames for the paintings. Simple but strong and made from local wood, they seem an extension of the work.

"At first, I had them in gilt frames. I knew something wasn't right but I couldn't see what it was. Ian thinks in terms of design. He can see spaces and how to work with them and he was the one who told me how to frame them."

Sue held her first exhibition at Nunnington Hall last September, followed by another at Masham. She found herself in demand and was particularly gratified by the praise of fellow artists. That, more than anything, brought home to her just how desirable her work is.

One of her paintings has just been chosen for a major exhibition at Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and other works are on display at the Old School Gallery in Muker from this week.

With a growing reputation, it would be easy to churn out paintings for sale in galleries but that isn't what Sue wants.

"I have no interest in producing paintings like some kind of assembly line," she says. "I want recognition and it doesn't matter how long it takes."

Published: 05/04/2004