SINCE leaving the teaching profession ten years ago, Frank Gordon has moved to the Yorkshire Dales National Park to indulge in his dual passions of painting and hill walking.

Most of his work relates to his experience of the countryside as a life-long walker, and the latest results can be seen in his exhibition, Walking The Landscape, at King's Manor, Exhibition Square, York.

"I have increasingly tried in my work to recapture the feelings of being among the hills: experiencing their enveloping mists, flickering light, flying cloud shadows, buffeting wind and rainwater on the face, while never forgetting that behind those often bewildering assaults on one's senses lies the underlying reality of the hard rock, solid and unyielding beneath one's feet," says Frank.

"This collision between the ephemeral and the eternal is a good subject for a painter."

Born in Westhoughton, Lancashire, in 1943, he studied at Bolton College of Art before entering art teaching, first in Lancashire and then Yorkshire, after emigrating across the Pennines in 1972.

He frequently gives talks to art clubs and societies and will be teaching painting in Tuscany this summer.

The talking continues to run in tandem with the walking and painting.

Frank has covered most of the long-distance paths in Britain as well as major routes in the Alps; in 1997, he and his wife, Sheila, back-packed 1,200 miles from Land's End to John O'Groats and, in 2004, they trekked through the Scottish Highlands from Fort William to Cape Wrath, paint brushes ever at the ready.

Walking The Landscape is on view until May 6 in the Senior Common Room gallery at King's Manor, from 10am to 3.45pm.

Updated: 16:11 Thursday, April 07, 2005