JOHN Masefield’s oft-recited poem, Sea Fever – “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky...” – could well describe artist Lindsey Cooper’s condition over the past year.

For she has been spending many hours trying to capture the ocean’s changing moods and palette for her first solo exhibition at Allendale’s Forge Studios this month.

Titled Water Marks, her show of paintings and linoprints celebrates the power and majesty of water.

Much of the work she has produced since last May, when Lindsey and her elder sibling, Kathy Stevens, another artist, decided to embark on a sisterly sabbatical.

“We did quite a lot of sitting on beaches,” Lindsey laughs. “We took a full year and tried to meet up every month or so and do something.

“We had a week up on the Northumberland coast in a cottage at Sugar Sands near Longhoughton and a few days at Spurn Point near Hull.

“Then I spent some time with Kathy in Wakefield, where she lives, and we went down to the River Calder.”

Although sometimes working from photographs, Lindsey prefers to paint from life.

“What I really like to do is get out there and sketch or paint in situ,” she says. “I enjoy painting seascapes because of the infinite variety. The sea can be really calm and soothing or wild and stormy and it’s also moving all the time, so it’s a challenge to capture the mood at a particular time.

“Some of my work is about what water does to the surrounding environment – if it’s the sea, the focus may be of the beach and what the sea has washed up onto it –the flotsam and jetsam.

“Or it could be the way the river cuts channels into the rocks. A sudden shift in cloud cover with its reflections on water, or rock pools left behind by receding tides, all fascinate me.

“Acrylics suit my way of working as I can quickly lay down layers of paint on canvas, building them up to create texture and interest.”

Lindsey and Kathy staged an exhibition of their paintings earlier this year called A Shared View at The Northumberland Studio, in the grounds of Wheelbirks Farm at Broomley, near Stocksfield.

But this solo exhibition at Allendale will feature new paintings and also some of her linoprints – a fresh and exciting venture for the Hexham-based artist.

“I started experimenting with linoprinting last year and it became quite addictive,” said Lindsey, who is self-taught.

The online manual that is You-tube, she adds, is “a wonderful thing”.

So far, her printing has proved very popular – particularly with this year’s Alnmouth Art Festival goers who snapped up her linocut of the village’s ferry hut.

She went on to depict another image of the refuge hut on the Holy Island causeway – the one stranded drivers escape to.

“I found that I liked this hut theme so I also did the upturned boat huts on Lindsfarne. They all fed into the watery theme,” she smiles.

“With my painting I am quite loose and expressive, but I have another side to me that quite likes detail. I think I need both things depending what mood I am in.

“The linoprinting feeds into my technical and precise side, the paintings are a release from that. I like the process of the cutting, and the printing part is always exciting.”

Lindsey is the youngest of seven children, born and brought up in Barnsley, Yorkshire, and both of her older sisters paint.

Asked where the artistic gene comes from, she explains that her father always swore that he could paint.

“Though I never saw any evidence apart from his signwriting, which he was very good at.

“My grandad had a haulage business called G Cooper and Sons and my dad did all the signwriting on the side of the tankers and it was absolutely beautiful. He clearly had talent.”

On leaving school, Lindsey went to Northern Counties College of Education to do a teacher training course, majoring in art.

But instead of going into teaching, she took up a career in local government.

“Every now and then I would do a bit of painting or drawing. Then about ten years ago, I decided to really go for it.”

She enrolled on a course at Queen Elizabeth High School which inspired her to take up her paintbrush once again.

In April 2015, she took redundancy from Newcastle City Council where she worked as a programme manager in social care.

Lindsey chaired Network Artists North East for three and a half years and was part of the planning team for the late, lamented Art Tour which she took part in twice.

“Unfortunately we lost the funding from the Arts Council – it’s a shame because it was a brilliant platform. It was my first toe in the water doing the Art Tour and it gave me the confidence to carry on exhibiting,” she says.

As well as her own practise, Lindsey also spends some of her time helping others express themselves through art.

Art for You is a Macmillan project in Hexham that began in May for people affected by cancer.

* Water Marks is at Allendale Forge Studios throughout July.