Artbeat
Lancashire artist Keith Melling has been inspired by the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales

VALLEYS, crags and peaks; sweeping fells and green valleys; vibrant market towns and farms aplenty: the scenery of the Yorkshire Dales is an artist’s playground. More than nine million people visit each year, many of them drawn from outside Yorkshire to take in its views. Among them is artist Keith Melling, who lives near the Yorkshire-Lancashire border and who finds no end of inspiration in the Dales’ diverse scenery.

After capturing the Dales on paper for several years, Keith has created a new book of his art. In ‘Keith Melling: An Artist in the Dales’, he explores each major dale, accompanying his detailed paintings with maps, snippets of history, folklore, geology and wildlife, along with anecdotes and painting tips.
‘The diverse scenery of the Yorkshire Dales is stunningly beautiful,’ he writes in his introduction. ‘It means many things to many people, but to the landscape painter, it offers an inexhaustible variety and wealth of superb subject matter.’

As he explains, the Yorkshire Dales National Park is vast, covering more than 680 square miles. ‘Each dale has its own individual character,’ he writes. He is captivated by the ‘sweeping whalebacked fells adorned with purple heather’, ‘lush valleys patterned with patchwork fields’ and ‘romantic ruined abbeys’. Due to the Dales’ changeable weather, though, a scene can alter completely in an instant. His book, he writes, is therefore ‘a work in progress, for a complete survey of the Yorkshire Dales from an artist’s point of view could never be completed.'

Keith showed enthusiasm for art from an early age, and held his first exhibition in 1966 when he was just a teenager, having been largely self-taught. After working in several occupations he took up full-time art in 1983, and there is now a high demand for his fine quality prints. ‘I’ve always believed that art should speak for itself and need no explanation beyond a title and, perhaps at most, a simple commentary,’ he writes in the book’s postscript.

As Keith explains in the preface, he was slightly nervous about launching the book, wondering what his fellow Lancastrians would think. ‘Would they consider me a traitor for producing a book on Yorkshire?’ he writes. ‘Conversely, what would be the view from over the border? Would Yorkists see the endeavours of a foreigner painting and writing about their beloved territory as audacious?’ It seems unlikely that his worries will be realised, however. The book shows the area at its best, illustrating with enough meticulous detail and colour to do justice to the scenery it represents.

What really shines from the pages is Keith’s enthusiasm for his subject. As he writes: ‘Latterly I have concentrated all my efforts on the Dales and have really caught the bug,’ he writes. ‘The startling richness and variety found there, not only in the grand panoramic vistas but also in the minutiae of the ordinary things, has cast an indelible magical spell.’

•    ‘Keith Melling: An Artist in the Dales’ is published by Plover Publications, and costs £19.50. It is available from www.kmelling.co.uk.