A community shop and café has announced a series of new art exhibitions.

Following their 2021 programme, which they say was a huge success, the gallery at Hallbankgate Hub Community Shop and Café continues to champion the work of locally based artists with a diverse and exciting programme and is looking forward to welcoming a host of artistic talent for their exhibition series from January to July 2022.

The programme includes photography, illustration, textile art, landscape art and a local history exhibition featuring old photographs and archival material of the industrial and social history between the hamlets of Roachburn and Kirkhaugh.

The community shop said the programme aims to offer artists who live and work in the North Pennines and surrounding areas the opportunity to bring their work into the rural community of Hallbankgate and to make a wide range of artistic genres accessible to those living outside the urban conurbations.

The programme opens with Finding the Light by Stuart Fraser, a landscape painter.

Stuart describes himself as an old fashioned landscape painter, working mostly in oils, but also acrylics and mixed media.

He works from his studio in Great Corby, where he lives, and is always out searching for those “special” moments in nature where magic suddenly and fleetingly happens, the Hub said.

Whether the Lakeland mountains, the lonely and desolate Solway salt marshes or further afield, his approach is always the same - to find the light.

Stuart's exhibition is all about capturing that elusive light and how it caresses the landscape.

Finding the Light runs from Tuesday January 4 until Sunday February 12 and can be visited during Hub's opening hours – Monday to Saturday 9-4pm, Sunday 9-12pm for free.

Upcoming exhibitions include a mixed media exhibition featuring Sheila Pinder, photographer with A Flower a Day and Charlotte Draper, illustrator with A Moment Captured; From Roachburn to Kirkhaugh, by Coanwood History Group; Textile Travels by Helen Steer and Mapscapes and Streetscapes by Natalie Burns.

For more information about the Hub and the other services they provide, visit their website at https://hallbankgatehub.org/.