VISITORS from Italy, Belgium and Ireland have attended the launch of Professor Elaine Thomas’s exhibition at According To McGee in York.

Divine Antics has been curated by gallery co-director Ails McGee and a female-only team of assistants.

“Elaine Thomas’s work is inspired by the medieval, wherever it is found, as well as Greek, Roman and Indian art,” says Ails, above with Elaine. “There’s a faded fresco quality to her art that lends it a classic glow and the figures are great.

“They take on these postures, cavorting and intermingling, and are very, very well drawn. They’re like something from an ancient story and bring to mind both the biblical and the pagan.”

Prof Thomas was awarded a CBE in 2011 for her contribution to the creative arts in higher education, having managed the merger of the former Surrey Institute of Art & Design with the Kent Institute of Art and Design in 2005 and overseen the creation of the University for the Creative Arts in her tole as Vice-Chancellor.

“Elaine Thomas is a fascinating artist,” says Ails. “ Her work is evocative, funny, feminine and she’s a great character. We’re honoured to exhibit her work as part of our tenth anniversary series.”

Divine Antics will run until June 2; ten per cent of all proceeds will go Dianne Willcocks’s York Theatre Foundation