Pressing the family needs led Fiona Horner to forget her first love - art. Now, thanks to a friend, she's dusted down her brushes and got out the paint again. Sharon Griffiths reports.

Sometimes you need a friend to get you into gear again... That's what happened to artist Fiona Horner. A talented artist and textile designer - she used to be a designer for Marks & Spencer - she'd won awards, and travel bursaries and exhibited her work.

But then with the birth of son Joe, now four years old, painting took second place. Well, actually no, it got pushed out altogether.

Joe, an enchanting child, has special needs. Fiona and husband Dan moved back to Spennymoor to be near her family and last year Fiona went back to college to train for a job in Learning Support

"I did absolutely nothing with painting, apart from take an odd photo, but that was it. Even the paints I used were obsolete. No one stocked them any more. "

Then Bishop Auckland author Wendy Robertson came along. An old friend, Wendy was writing a novel inspired by Whitworth Hall in Spennymoor, ancestral home of the Shafto family and now a hotel. Wendy was a regular visitor there soaking up the atmosphere. Perhaps, she suggested, Fiona could do some paintings to go with the book.

The result is a splendid series of sketches and paintings, atmospheric and evocative, that are currently displayed in an exhibition at Bishop Auckland Town Hall.

"When I looked at Whitworth Hall, it really fired me up," says Fiona. "We first went in the autumn and then through the winter when you can see the skeleton of things. Right through to high summer when there was colour everywhere."

The original Whitworth Hall, much grander even than the present building, burnt down. But Fiona was able to recreate it in paintings and also imagine how the grounds had been. "Old paths seem to lead you through to the right places," she says.

As well as the hall, there is also a row of workers' cottages - shielded from each other by a small wood. But from the far side of the lake, Fiona managed to capture them both in one picture, enclosed in their own world.

In the paintings - a rose arbour where modern brides like their photographs taken, an old conservatory where passionflowers run riot in contrast to the neatly pruned and ordered trees behind, a wrought iron gate enticingly open - past and present seem to mingle, like the layers of paint.

"I hate flat paintings, or paintings that have been overworked. Mixed media keeps the life in it. You can see the layers, what came before as well as after," says Fiona.

The paintings also seem to feature a lot of gateways and pathways that take you through the picture. Fiona's own pathway is now clear. Her spare bedroom has been turned into a studio and there is plenty of work on-going.

"During the exhibition I shall spend some time in the Town Hall, painting Bishop Auckland, the town hall itself and surrounding scenes so people can see the process of painting - from photographs, through sketches to the finished piece."

Then, as well as her new job as a Learning Support assistant, there will be painting, lots and lots more painting. "I'm fascinated by the sea at the moment so that will be a starting point."

And now she's found her vocation again, there will be no stopping her this time.

l Whitworth Hall, an artist's inspiration by Fiona Horner is at the McGuinness Gallery at Bishop Auckland Town Hall until September 13.

* Honesty's Daughter, Wendy Robertson's new novel inspired by Whitworth Hall, is published by Headline on September 7 at £18.99. Read a review of it on the Books page in tomorrow's Northern Echo.