WHENEVER it is summer on Tower Street, York artist Richard Barnes returns like a swallow to take over his regular spot at According To McGee.

For eight years, Richard has brought a splash of colour to the York gallery, his cityscapes becoming a seasonal fixture opposite Clifford's Tower. From Saturday, he will be exhibiting there for a ninth summer season, but this is a year with a difference, one that explains the exhibition title of Le Tour Yorkshire: Contemporary Paintings of the Northern Route.

"Le Tour de France is big, big news, and Le Grand Départ takes the cyclists straight past our gallery on Sunday," says co-director Greg McGee.

"With that in mind, Richard has sidestepped his annual display of Jackson Pollock-style York city architecture and spent the last year experiencing the route of Le Tour.

"The landscapes created here are masterly paintings, just as experimental and visceral as his cityscapes, but with a quieter majesty. It's funny, if you want to feel what it must be like pounding a bike up a Yorkshire slope while either being flayed by a storm or soaking up the sun, and you can't jump on a bike and join the professionals, make sure you come over and see this exhibition.

"You can fall right into the paintings. It's not only the sense of the elements that hits you, the energy of the light and wind; it's also the composition, just how well crafted the illusion of distance is. We all know how iridescent the distant hills of Yorkshire look when you're up and amongst it. Well, here you've got the next best thing."

Richard has taken to his bike over the past year to cover all 245 miles of Le Tour's route through Yorkshire.

"I've been experiencing the landscape and feeling the physical excitement of cycling through it," he says.

"I’ve tried strapping on a video camera and filming the descents; I’ve tried standing in the storms and attempting to photograph and draw. These painting are a result of this experience. We who live in Yorkshire know the space and power of its landscapes. These paintings explore and celebrate this unique county and this unique event."

In addition to Barnes's cycling adventures, According To McGee's charitable arm, New Visuality, has been working towards the same exhibition.

"We have the paintings of Richard Barnes as a touchstone, from which we've get creative responses from people who use wheelchairs," says Greg.

"The big target was to bring some of the exposure that bicycles are enjoying, and bring some of that round to wheelchairs, which are after all pretty amazing machines. They're beautiful, resilient and witty, and just as liberating in their own way as bicycles. So the work that the participants have created is pretty impressive stuff, and looks great alongside Richard's work."

The New Visuality strand of the show is part of a larger project, The Wheel Turns, funded by City of York Council's Be Part of It project and Arts Council England.

"When you get more than ten wheelchair users creating art that's set to be exhibited at not only at According to McGee, but also at Starbucks, Visit York, city-centre churches and the Melbourne Centre, it really shows the power of creativity," says co-director Ails McGee. "

It's redemptive stuff, but it's also a chance for people who've spent too long being patronised to get inventive and mischievous. In that sense, Le Tour Yorkshire is about as inclusive a sport event as I've ever seen."

Le Tour Yorkshire: Contemporary Paintings of the Northern Route, runs at According To McGee, Tower Street, York, from Saturday to September 1, launched by a private view at 1pm on Saturday.