A BARNINGNHAM artist is to host only her second exhibition in more than three decades this month.
Angie Townsend stopped exhibiting and re-focussed her creative side when she quit her job as an art teacher in Richmond and moved to the dale 36 years ago.
She said: “I wanted to move out of that whole environment, so I gave everything up and moved here not knowing what I was going to do.”
The artist became involved in natural healing and offered colour therapy and life coaching. She said: “I was so absorbed in therapy and developing a garden that all other creativity was by-passed in a way.”
Her work got a boost when Tyne Tees television produced a documentary on her therapies, and she was flooded with people asking for help.
Ms Townsend said: “I was completely overwhelmed and exhausted by that.”
She then turned to her other great passion and started to do gardening design and writing gardening pieces for the Teesdale Mercury and other magazines. It wasn’t until about three years ago that she returned to art in a serious way.
While working as an art teacher her focus was on detailed pencil work, but she found she couldn’t physically do it anymore, so she turned back to her roots of textile, print and colour.
She now works mainly with acrylics on paper, but sometimes mixes in other media to produce landscapes of Teesdale, Swaledale, Arkengarthdale and surrounding dales in North Yorkshire.
She said: “I do like colour. Colour is important in people’s lives from all sorts of angles. It is important for the emotional, mental, spiritual and physical balance of a person. The colours we wear, the colours we eat, it has an effect on us. It can lift spirits – people have said I have happy paintings.
“The landscape, and being outdoors is my happy place.”
She works by taking a series of photographs of scenes that inspire her while out walking. Once in the studio she draws scenes from the photographs.
She added: “Then I paint using colours that come to me when I look at the drawing, and I probably choose the palette from the way I am feeling.”
Ms Townsend held her first exhibition in more than three decades in September 2019 at Barningham Village Hall, and was due to hold her second at Richmond Station last year but it was cancelled because of the Covid lockdown.
Now more than 30 landscapes produced by Ms Townsend go on display in a show called Across Fell ‘n’ Dale at Barningham Village Hall on Saturday, August 21, and Sunday, August 22.
Admission is free and light refreshments will be available between 10.30am and 4pm on both days.
People can see more of her work by searching for Angie Townsend Art on Facebook.
