A GALLERY near York has its sights set on becoming the UK’s largest supplier of artwork inspired by cars and motorsport.

Lazenby Visuals in Helmsley is attracting a growing number of customers across the globe for its specialist collection.

Set up by Chris Lazenby five years ago, the gallery sells artwork from local artists and Chris’ own photography, alongside offering a framing service. But, in recent years, Chris has also been combining his love of visual art with his passion for cars and motorsport.

As well as running the gallery, and his role as a retained firefighter for the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, Chris is a successful motorsport photographer, often travelling the world to photograph GT and endurance racing.

In the first 12 months of doing motorsport professionally, he photographed events in Dubai, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, USA, Holland and recently returned from a race in Sicily.

During this time Chris has supplied images to some of the world’s leading GT teams as well as manufacturers such as Mercedes AMG and Aston Martin.

The Helmsley gallery and its website has expanded to accommodate Chris’s love of the automotive world, now stocking his own work along with pieces from artists from as far afield as Denmark and Chile.

The gallery is home to more than 200 pieces of automotive work, currently from more than a dozen different artists and this is still growing. The range includes everything from limited edition prints and traditional acrylic paintings, to more contemporary digital artwork.

With the online store offering free worldwide shipping, Lazenby Visuals has attracted interest from around the globe.

A large proportion of sales are sent to the US, as well as mainland Europe and Australia.

At least 30 per cent of the gallery’s online traffic comes from America. Upon his recent return from Sicily, Chris had orders to send out to Oklahoma, Nevada, New York, Georgia, Maryland, Ontario, Vancouver, Slovenia, Dubai, France and Japan, as well as within the UK.

Chris said: “The automotive world is my personal passion, so it’s a dream come true to be able to combine my work and my hobby.

"There’s so much interest in automotive art from fans such as myself and I wanted to bring it all together as much as possible, so people could always find what they wanted.

"Having work from so many different artists allows us to stock a wide range of different styles and covers many brands of motor vehicles. Also working with so many different artists we’re in a prime position to help people commission artwork of their own vehicles.

“As well as stocking artwork from the UK, we also have pieces from artists in Denmark, Chile, Spain and the Ukraine and we have others in the pipeline as well.

"I like to work closely with the artists, forging a good relationship with them and because of this, Lazenby Visuals is the sole retailer for a number of artists, meaning you can’t get these pieces from anywhere else.

"We get a lot of very specific requests, and if we don’t already have what someone is after we usually know an artist who can help.”

For more information and to see the items in the collection visit www.lazenbyvisuals.com/automotive-art