DEBORAH Burrow, Douglas Hill and Julia Poulton will be exhibiting original paintings in the group show A Sense Of Place at the Blue Tree Gallery, Bootham, York, from Saturday.

Burrow's tranquil paintings are inspired by the countryside of Suffolk and northern Britain, where she interprets her "on-location experiences" into colourful and textural paintings of fields, hills, seasons and wildlife.

Once back in the studio, her artistic practice, process, influence and intuition, together with the back and forth relationship between them, are crucial to the way she creates her final pieces.

“Growing up in the countryside of Suffolk was my first influence and I began to capture the character of its landscapes at an early age," Deborah says. "While developing as an artist, my affinity with the landscape and its richness has grown and my work still reflects this."

Latterly, Burrow's works are inspired by places further afield such as Northern Ireland, Yorkshire, northern England and the Spanish mountains in Cantoria, having taken many trips to see their scenery first hand.

"Each of my paintings starts with a basic sketch and plan," she says. "As the creative process develops, I allow the piece to show itself and breathe its own life. Being so connected with the subject of the painting aids the evolution of the spirit and mood of each artwork I produce.

"The whole process of making art for me is like the natural growth and rhythm of the landscapes I portray; it starts with a seed and flourishes at its own pace, giving rise to a rich depth, vibrancy and texture.”

Born in West Yorkshire in 1953, Douglas Hill is a completely self-taught plein-air artist who paints directly from nature in oils, and his works have been exhibited in galleries all over Britain and as far afield as the United States and New Zealand.

He is most associated with large paintings of Cornish beach scenes, harbours and towns, having spent much of his life there. He was a member of the St Ives Society of Artists and St Ives Arts Club, running his own gallery on Fore Street for 16 years, and he now lives in North Yorkshire,where he is finding new inspiration in the rich and varied landscape.

Originally from Wakefield, abstract expressive artist Julia Poulton has lived in Harrogate for many years, from where she interprets both landscape and emotion through bold intuitive painting. She has always felt a strong connection with nature, but while this remains an enduring source of inspiration for her work, the urge to use paint to express her "internal" world has latterly become intrinsic to Poulton’s practice. A spontaneous approach in the studio allows her to create fluid and abstract compositions, where self-expression dominates and something unexpected may emerge. A sense of landscape or figures may be apparent through this process, although this is left open to the imagination of the viewers, who Poulton hopes will find their own resonance within her paintings.

For Poulton, each painting represents an in-the-moment emotional response, where the finished piece becomes a visual memory of that moment. Mainly working in oils on canvas or board, she is passionate about colour and enjoys experimenting with different techniques and media to create textures and surfaces, into which she will draw, scrape, scratch and apply energetic brushstrokes of colour.

Poulton, who gained a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art at the University of East London in 1994, exhibits widely and received a highly commended award for her painting Those Days in the 2017 Harrogate Open Exhibition at the Mercer Gallery.

A Sense Of Place will be on show from this weekend to June 2. Gallery opening times are 10am to 5.30pm, Monday to Saturday.