KENTMERE House Gallery regular artist Susan Bower has not only been selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, she also is featured in this week's edition of the Radio Times.

More than 11,000 paintings were put forward but only 1,200 have been selected, making Susan's achievement all the better, much to the delight of Kentmere House owner and curator Ann Petherick.

“Submitting to a London exhibition can be expensive for an artist, as well as time-consuming, but it is important if their work is to become more widely-known," she says. "I find it very satisfying when someone who so much deserves to be recognised achieves that status, especially as they are invariably bowled over by it.”

Susan, who is 61, lives near Tadcaster in a large farmhouse where several cats and dogs act as models for her paintings. "She initially trained as a scientist but then had four children and gave up work to look after them, but she started drawing and painting while the children were small, became hooked, and took professional tuition," says Ann.

Susan has exhibited her distinctive, humorous oil paintings at Kentmere House for more than 15 years and has submitted work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for even longer, 22 years in all. "For the first four years she was rejected, but then her persistence paid off and there have since been few years when she hasn’t been selected," says Ann.

This year, Susan has been working on a series of paintings of nuns on bicycles. "She claims one of them was inspired by the Bile Beans poster in Monkgate, in York, and that painting is now on show at Kentmere House, while another has been selected for the Royal Academy show," says Ann

Susan is one of only two artists to be interviewed for the Radio Times article on the Academy exhibition. On Page 28, she is pictured at work and her exhibit, A Cat Can Stare, is shown too. "Being selected [for the Royal Academy] is like being invited to the most wonderful party," she told the weekly listings magazine. "Of course, when you're not invited, it's absolutely gutting, but I always go to the exhibition, whether I'm in it or not."

Her other submission for the 2014 show, a study of two women dancing, also progressed as far as the final selection, but not to the Piccadilly gallery's walls. "In my head, an 'Academy picture' has to have an idea in it," Susan said to the Radio Times. "With the nun painting, I wanted to express an otherworldliness of the nun cycling along while we – and the cat – look on in wonderment."

Selected more often than she is not by the RA, Susan will continue to submit her work to the prestigious London show. "I've been lucky so far, but there's an element of doggedness," she said in her Radio Times profile. "I will do it till I die."

Kentmere House, in Scarcoft Hill, York, is the only northern gallery at which Susan exhibits regularly, all the others being in London, the south west or the Cotswolds. "We have several pieces of her work at the gallery, ranging in price from £1,000 to £2,500," says Ann.

Ann's gallery is open every Thursday evening from 6pm to 9pm and on the first Saturday and Sunday of every month from 11am to 5pm; visitors are also welcome at any time by arrangement in advance on 01904 656507. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition will run until August 17; book online at royalacademy.org.uk