A TYNE Valley artist will exhibit his work in a newly reopened, and rebranded, arts centre over the next month.

Peter Robson, of Hexham, will showcase his paintings in the Hive Art Centre, in Nenthead, from September 17 to October 11.

Mr Robson is an artist who paints surreal images, often presenting politically-driven events. He has always painted, but worked in social and probation services, entering professional art relatively late in life.

He is looking forward to showing his work to a local audience.

He said: "I have, since being a young child, drawn, painted, mused and dreamed way too much, and I guess these could be considered the constituent parts of being an artist.

"However, as a teenager, I started to reflect on the world and my analysis of world events started to develop.

"Often I present politically driven events in order to provoke questions about the actions of those in power and those that have grabbed power.

"In light of this, I have been inspired by this landscape with its villages and towns languid in contrast to the once thriving behemoth it was.

"A powerhouse of the industrial age, consuming all before it, furnaces, mines and people.

"Men, women and children toiling at the behest of industrialists with untold stories of hardship, poverty and death.

"The seams of time stained with ochre still show evidence that will not be subdued, will not be 'airbrushed' away, a mound, a hillock is evidence.

"Within the chaos, the carnage, the sweat, stone upon stone was laid in this new quest for Mammon, a promised land to become in fact a new Eden and in turn Paradise Lost.

"Adam and Eve eventually would have to find a new Shangri-la."

Mr Robson has exhibited work at the Water Street Gallery, Todmorden, the Fuse Gallery, Bradford and the exhibition space at Bradford Brewery.