WOMEN of the world gallop through the Dales in a set of vibrant oil paintings that form the new exhibition at the Gallery on the Green in Settle.

The Yorkshire landscape’s beauty is joyously expressed by artist Lois Brothwell who says: “Hiking in The Yorkshire Dales is a joyous and liberating experience.

“The question for me as an artist is how to communicate such a heady sensation? My answer is by painting ecstatic women galloping on horseback, tossing their garments and inhibitions to the wind!”

The exhibition, in the former Settle BT phone box, thought to be one of the world’s smallest art galleries, opens this Saturday and runs until Friday, July 6.

In its final week it forms part of the Three Peaks Arts Trail that will feature 16 venues between Settle, Ribblehead and Ingleton.

Lois’s exposure to art began in her late teens when she left Canada, where she grew up.

After a year working in England then a tour of Europe, she returned to the UK, moving to Yorkshire where she fell under the spell of the landscape’s beauty.

She took up drawing and painting, training with nationally reputed artists including Helen Peyton and Tom Wood.

Lois enjoys figurative and narrative painting “with a bit of abstract thrown in”.

She loves colour and “plucks from several triads for a single canvas”.

She said: “I’m impulsive with colour... if I suddenly fancy some lime green or blazing-hot orange I use them. I don’t care if they upset the picture’s cohesion... I want to have fun.”

Paintings on display are for sale with all proceeds to Leeds Society for Deaf and Blind People.