LOOK at a roll of toilet tissue and its artistic potential probably won't be the first thing that springs to mind.

But for artist Mick Smith the texture of the toilet roll is the very thing to get his artistic imagination flowing.

For the oil painter uses the paper to help create his work, which will be exhibited from today at the Gallery at Chester Moor, by The Chester Moor pub, off the A167.

Soon he hopes art lovers will be rolling up to buy his paintings.

"Obviously the stuff gets soggy and breaks up and ends up in the painting," he said.

"It provides a lovely textured effect. I don't use it exclusively but sometimes it works. I would describe myself as a semi-abstract expressionist."