PAINTINGS by one of County Durham's greatest living artists are tipped to reach several thousand pounds when they go under the hammer in Newcastle next week.

The three pieces of artwork by Norman Cornish are to be auctioned off at Anderson and Garland on Tuesday, three days before a major exhibition of his work at the University Gallery, University of Northumbria in Newcastle.

The Spennymoor artist was a member of his town's fabled Pitman's Academy, which offered miners the chance to widen their horizons and re-educate them for life after the mines. Other famous 'graduates' include writer Sid Chaplain and artist Tom McGuinness.

In December last year, a painting by Norman Cornish fetched £3,000 at auction.

Picture specialist John Anderson said: "Norman, who is now in his eighties, might be termed the grand old man of North-East art, and is certainly the best known of our living artists.

"Many people, however, mistakenly think of him only as a pitman artist, when the bulk of his work has actually been directed at shrewd and telling observations of the social life around him at Spennymoor.

"Our three pictures, for instance, show a typical back street in the town; a top-coated man drinking at a bar and two local housewives gossiping.

"Spennymoor was, of course, where Norman was born, and still lives today, and no-one arguably knows it better. His studies of life there in the recent past probably represent the most intimate pictorial record of any town in Britain in the late 20th century."

* The Norman Cornish exhibition, A Shot Against Time, will be at the University Gallery from March 21 to April 25.