WENSLEYDALE artist Piers Browne will launch his exhibition of etchings and oils from his new book The Glorious Trees Of Great Britain at the North Light Gallery, Armitage Bridge, Huddersfield, with a private view and book-signing session on October 12.

The exhibition's run from October 16 to December 14 will coincide with the October 24 publication of Piers's book by John Murray in association with the Shorthorn Press, priced at £35. Signed copies are available from Piers on 01969 650434 or 07876 233310, and he will hold a second book-signing day at the gallery on November 15, plus another at Godfrey & Watt in Harrogate on October 19. Royalties from book sales will be donated to the Conservation Foundation, and Piers hopes to raise up to £10,000 for the cause.

The 192-page "coffee-table" book includes a foreword by the Prince of Wales and text by environmentalist Professor David Bellamy, the television personality and Conservation Foundation president, who introduces each species of tree and its ecology, physiology and role in the British landscape and culture. An apt piece of prose or poem by a living or long-past wordsmith accompanies each etching or drypoint, and contributors include songwriter Paul Simon, Nobel Prize Winner Seamus Heaney, Margaret Whyte, Siegfried Sassoon and Dylan Thomas and special commissions from Riding Lights writers Antony Dunn and Nigel Forde and .

Piers is a lover of trees and wood - he was brought up in Shropshire in a house made partly of recycled ships - and he began his tree project about 15 years ago as a response to the ravages of Dutch elm disease. "I'd done a picture at Castle Bolton with elm trees at either side; I realised they were 300 or 400 years old and now they were no more," says Piers, who lives in the North Yorkshire village of Askrigg, Wensleydale. "For 12 years, I travelled around Britain etching all kinds of tree: thankfully Britain is still rich in the numbers and varieties of its trees."

In the exhibition, Browne's pictures take the viewer from Killarney to Kew Gardens; from Samuel Palmer's view from Shoreham to Winston Churchill's kitchen garden; from a palm tree in the New Forest to a rowan in the Cheviots. In all there are 20 oils, about 170 etchings and drypoints, two tree sculptures, two light boxes and 100 small oil paintings. Praising Browne's etchings and oils, the Prince of Wales says: "Trees have a unique capacity to lift our spirits and it is this entirely intangible dimension that Piers Browne evokes so splendidly in the Glorious Trees Of Great Britain."

David Bellamy adds: "You will find the soul of Britain crafted into the pages of the book, for this is a man who can see the wood and the tress together in all their glory."

The last comment should go to Piers himself: "When I come out on the lawn and see a glowing hillside, or a silver moon rising, I feel I must paint it. otherwise I feel cowardly."

Piers Browne, Etchings and Oils from his new book The Glorious Trees Of Great Britain, North Light Gallery, Armitage Bridge Mills, Armitage Bridge, Huddersfield, October 16 to December 14. Opening hours are Wednesday to Saturday, 11am to 4.30pm. Admission: £2/£1 optional charge.

Updated: 09:16 Friday, September 13, 2002