Mirfield artist pays tribute to her home county in exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Born, brought up and still living in Mirfield, where she also has her studio, artist Janine Burrows is very fond of her home county and that affection is eloquently expressed in a new body of work now on display at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Table to Tide: A Yorkshire Conversation showcases a collection of around a hundred artworks including paintings, screen prints and small-scale wooden sculptures celebrating the diverse beauty of Yorkshire, taking the viewer on a journey around the county featuring dramatic rural vistas, urban streets and coastal seascapes.

With a background in design and illustration as well as painting, Burrows creates textured images in a detailed yet naïve style using a carefully considered colour palette. Her work really does convey the sense of someone who knows Yorkshire well and feels a great affinity with it. “When I was invited by the YSP to create a complete body of work for an exhibition, we talked about how the focus should be my home county – and the idea of being able to throw myself into celebrating Yorkshire was wonderful,” says Burrows. “I was up for the challenge but it is so vast and varied a county, my first thought was ‘where do you start?’”

Her approach was to begin by exploring places with which she felt a particular connection. “I started by looking at it from a personal perspective,” she says. “The places I would go on holiday or on day trips with my mum and dad when I was a child, for example. We always went on holiday to Scarborough, so the East Coast had a very special place in my heart growing up. We also went to the Dales on holidays occasionally and even though it’s not that far away from where we lived, it felt like an adventure. Mirfield is a little bit urban, although you can see the hills from there; in the Dales it felt a bit wilder, quite a long way from our town life. So, I started with those personal aspects.”

Acknowledging the events that we have all lived through over the past two years because of the Covid pandemic, Burrows also wanted to consider the domestic sphere where we were all confined for significant periods of time. “The premise was from being in lockdown, having restricted access to places and not being able to travel, so my inspiration came from a different perspective, much closer to home. I was very much on home turf – the back garden and the kitchen table – looking for inspiration in the everyday but also feeling that longing to be outside by the sea or in the landscape. All of that freedom to roam and be inspired by the things I am usually inspired by was suddenly taken away and that pulls you back to your immediate surroundings.”

So, as well as landscapes and seascapes there are some lovely still life paintings of familiar domestic scenes featuring items on Burrows’ kitchen table, glimpses into her back garden and views of the neighbourhood allotments, reflecting how everyone’s world shrunk at that time.

Most of Burrows’ work begins with a photo or a sketch of a particular location. “I take photographs or make sketches, not just of the landscape or seascape but also of the textures that are around that, such as foliage and birdlife and other natural things that are present. It’s not in close detail and I won’t do any work on site – the sketches tend to be quite simple and pared back. Then I take all that back to my studio. I don’t sketch onto the canvas, so from the initial idea I start playing around with the paints and acrylics, often mixing the colours on the surface and then it kind of evolves.”

She says most of the content of the picture comes from her memories and impressions of being in that particular location. It is an evocation, a communication of something fleeting, a capturing of a moment or a mood – and it comes across so effectively in her work. “That’s why the style is quite naïve, rather than getting stuck into the detail I am trying to evoke that moment or that memory,” she says. “That is also why colour plays such a big part in my work because I am always thinking about how to use it to evoke the essence of something.”

The exhibition also includes some exclusive site-specific pieces created especially for the YSP including paintings featuring some of Henry Moore’s iconic sculptures and one of Bretton Hall, the 18th century country house which stands within the grounds. There is also a range of merchandise which has been developed to complement the exhibition, including a tote bag, a bone china platter and mug, plus a wooden jigsaw puzzle and postcards featuring designs by Burrows and images from the show. “We had to get the merchandise designed quite early on so I started working on that, and the whole collection, in January,” she says. “The exhibition combines my painting, illustration and design sides so it is great that we have been able to encompass all that in the merchandise too. It has been wonderful seeing that all come together.”

For much of her career since graduating in 1994 from Batley School of Art and Design – where she studied surface pattern and printed textiles – Burrows has worked mostly in design, but during the first lockdown in 2020 she rediscovered her love of painting. “Ever since being very little, I was always happiest when I was drawing or painting but after my training, painting went into the background a bit, although it was a constant presence in my life. Design was my bread and butter but then when Covid happened all my freelance work suddenly stopped and I needed to keep busy and have a focus. That time gave me an opportunity to reflect.” She began experimenting with painting again and developing her skills in that area of her practice. “In the past two years painting has really come to the forefront of what I am doing creatively. I am really loving the challenge and excited about the journey I have started on. It will be interesting to see where it takes me next.”

One thing is for sure – she will continue to pay tribute in her work to her beloved Yorkshire. “I feel like I have only just scratched the surface with this collection, to be honest,” she says. “There are so many more aspects to explore.”

Table to Tide: A Yorkshire Conversation runs at the YSP Centre, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, until October 23. ysp.org.uk