A NEW delivery of paintings by Tessa Newcomb at Kentmere House Gallery is always an exciting event, according to gallery owner Ann Petherick.

“Tessa’s work is a joy to show and it’s still amazingly affordable, even now that she is so widely recognised,” says Ann, who opens her latest Newcomb show in York this weekend.

“This year, two events have further underlined Tessa’s role as a major artist of the 21st century. In February, her third solo show in London took place, and last month the first book on her work was published, written by Philip Vann.”

Ann has been showing Tessa’s artwork for 15 years. “I’ve watched it develop into the assured style she now has, but without losing any of the freshness and unpretentious quality which sets it apart,” she says.

“Like all the best artists, she is a compulsive painter and absorbs ideas for her painting wherever she is, including her trademark features of subtle colour, ordinary everyday situations, and quiet humour.” Born in 1955 in Suffolk, where she still lives, Tessa is the daughter of the renowned late painter Mary Newcomb, who died in 2007. Her first memory of painting in her childhood is of using up the board off-cuts left by her mother and consequently, to this day, her paintings are often done on unusual-shaped rectangles of board – either long and thin or tall and thin. Among her sources of inspiration, she counts watching slow, atmospheric films, early 20th-century urban photography, going places and rail journeys, and reading poetry. In her paintings, her Suffolk is a place of odd encounters: an unkempt land and seascape of working figures, dogs, boats, allotments, wild churchyards and wilder flowers. Author Philip Vann says: “Tessa Newcomb’s art arises from piercingly clear, pristine perceptions of the everyday and natural worlds. She sees her art as inseparable from ordinary life. Each of her paintings seems to tell a secret story.”

• Paintings by Tessa Newcomb will be on show at Kentmere House Gallery, Scarcroft Hill, York until May 20. Opening hours are 11am to 5pm, tomorrow and Sunday; 6pm to 9pm every Thursday; other times by arrangement on 01904 656507.

• Copies of Philip Vann’s illustrated hardback book are available from the gallery at £29.95.