Drawn to art

POP into the Pocklington Picture Framing Gallery most Thursdays and you're likely to see a slight, ginger-haired figure at work on an easel in one corner. Pause for a while to watch, and you may see something astonishing.

On the sheet of fine-grained black sandpaper that Catherine Inglis uses for her paintings, an animal will begin to appear. First, with a sweeping, confident movement of wrist and arm, it's an ear; then, a suggestion of legs and back, poised in a moment of alertness.

Within minutes, as if by magic, a hare is standing there before you, its nose and ears twitching, all its senses focused on some distant source of possible threat.

Admittedly, I catch her when she's just beginning a new painting. It's possibly the most dramatic time, when she's blocking out the 'canvas', sketching out the form of the hare and the landscape it is in. The painstaking detail will come later. But it's marvellous to watch nevertheless.

The walls of the Picture Framing Gallery are hung with several of Catherine's completed works - a kingfisher, a golden retriever, a pair of otters - but actually having the artist at work in the gallery is a big draw, admits owner Graham Wintringham. "When people see her at work, they often come in," he says. "It's good to have a working artist."

It's good for Catherine, too. A gregarious former nurse, she admits the one thing she misses since turning professional as an artist last summer is the people. She has her own studio at the home - a beautiful converted barn - she shares with her husband Ron in Skirpenbeck.

"But the only thing about working from home is that you don't come into contact with people. I'm a chatty person!" she says.

Hence her 'demonstration days' every Thursday at the Picture Framing Gallery, and the regular classes she runs in Pocklington.

It's obvious that in her corner beside the large main window at the Picture Framing Gallery she's in her element. Graham fusses around as she sets up her easel and lays out her tray of pastels. "I'll take that picture down, shall I?" he says, reaching up to remove a painting hanging in the window that is blocking Catherine's light. She nods comfortably.

It was Graham who gave Catherine the chance to make it as a professional.

She'd been painting for years, just for the pleasure it gave her. She, Ron and their two daughters Sarah and Jenny (now both grown up) lived at Sutton-in-Craven near Keighley, where Catherine worked as a nurse at Airedale General Hospital. "And people at the hospital were always asking me to paint their pets or paint their children," she says.

A couple of years ago, with their children having left home, she and Ron moved to Skirpenbeck when he got a new job in York. For Catherine, leaving behind her circle of friends in West Yorkshire was a big wrench. But one day, she popped into the Picture Framing Gallery to get some paintings framed. "And Graham said 'why not bring me some wildlife pictures, because that's the sort of thing that sells around here'."

So she did: and before long, Graham had offered Catherine her first ever solo exhibition. She turned professional last June, spent most of the year painting like mad - mainly wild animals, but also portraits of pets and people - and by her exhibition at the gallery last November, she had more than 30 works to display.

The exhibition, she admits with a hint of surprise, was quite successful. Several of the paintings sold, and she's now preparing for a second exhibition at the gallery in November.

She's also had two paintings accepted by the Society of Women Artists for display at the Westminster Gallery in London. Something she's delighted about. "I'm really pleased. I've not taken anything for submission to London before," she says.

She's now built up a reputation locally, and her main work comes through commissions - portraits of pets and family members. She works from photos - she likes to take them herself so she can meet the subject, she says - and some of her portraits have a startling detail and naturalness about them. They're not just reproductions of photographs,however. The pastels in which she works have a softening effect - and she hopes that in a good portrait, she can capture something about a subject that a photo will miss. That's why she feels it's important for her to meet the people or pets she is painting.

That's not always possible: but she still tries to put some soul in her paintings.

One of the works on display at her exhibition last November was of a blacksmith shoeing a horse. It was painted from an old black-and-white photograph somebody had lent her: she added the colours herself. She didn't know anything about the photo: who was in it, or when and where it was taken.

A woman who came to see her exhibition noticed the painting. "She said 'Gosh, that chap, his bum looks just like my husband, but he's got more hair!'" Catherine recalls.

She checked with the friend who had lent her the photo to see if she knew the name of the blacksmith - and it turned out the man in the photo was the woman's husband, photographed at work 20 years earlier.

"When I told her, she couldn't believe it," she says. "But I must have captured something of him. She bought the painting for him for Christmas!"

Catherine undertakes commissions for portraits and animal studies, and also runs a number of painting classes. She can be contacted on 01759 372629. Pocklington Picture Framing Gallery is on 01759 306201.

Updated: 08:57 Saturday, February 16, 2002