DEDICATED artists determined not to be beaten by coronavirus are taking their art to the people creating showpiece films of their work.

Artists across North Yorkshire stage Open Studios every June to showcase their creations and help create a marketplace for their paintings, ceramics and sculptures. In the face of the pandemic, the event had to be cancelled but 62 of them refused to give in and decided if people couldn’t come to them they would go to the people – virtually.

They each created a film showing their studios, artwork and techniques, for an insight into their creative practices, edited by independent filmmaker Josh Hallett. They included Anna Lambert and David Thomas, who are based at the Junction Workshop in Cross Hills, and Louise Fletcher who creates art at Brookfield Barn in Lothersdale.

North Yorkshire Open Studios committee member painter Debbie Loane said the artists set to work filming not only their finished pieces but creating an insight into the way they work.

Debbie said: “For these artists, who derive their living from their creative practice, it was important not to postpone Open Studios until next year but to take action to secure their income straight away. This is a truly unique opportunity to take up an invitation from the masters of their crafts.”

Anna Lambert makes handbuilt earthenware ceramics using techniques including slab-building and painted slips. Her ideas reflect an interest in place, exploring narratives relating to farmland and regeneration of orchards, combining drawing with abstract qualities of pots.

David Thomas’s oil paintings are closely observed still-lives, arrangements of things both found and made; pots and bits of stuff that have caught his eye, sometimes flowers. Simple objects in a recognisable space, formalist in conception, these still-life paintings seem almost habitable.

Louise Fletcher, of Brookfield Barn in Lothersdale, creates multi-layered, semi-abstract paintings in which landscape serves as a jumping off point for an exploration of her feelings, perceptions, and moods, and of paint, colour, line, and texture.

The films are being broadcast on the North Yorkshire Open Studios Facebook. They began last weekend and will run on Saturday and Sunday, June 13 and 14, offering an armchair tour of some of the region’s leading artists.

See facebook.com/NorthYorkshireOpenStudios for further information.