Into Abstraction: Paintings from the Harrogate Fine Art Collection features new work by North Yorkshire painters John Creighton and Simon Crawford with landscapes by the late Jack Hellewell.

Designed to attract a wide audience, especially students of art from schools and colleges, the show includes a wide variety of mostly paintings, but also prints, drawings and sculpture, with more than 50 works of art from the 1920s to the present day.

Jane Sellars, Harrogate Borough Council Curator of Art, said: “Not all of the paintings on show are purely abstract.

“As the title Into Abstraction suggests, we are showing how artists move from representational art into different ways of seeing.”

From the Harrogate Borough Council collection, there are works by Patrick Heron, Ivon Hitchens, Eileen Agar, Wyndham Lewis, Alan Davie, John Hoyland, Bruce McLean and Ian McKeever.

Jack Hellewell (1920-2000) was born in Bradford and went to art college there. Widely travelled, much of his work, mainly in acrylic, used the visual experience of intense light in warmer climates, as compared with the more subtle light he found in Britain.

Simon Crawford and John Creighton live and work in North Yorkshire.

Crawford, head of art at King James’s School, Knaresborough, said: “My work has developed from paintings where the human form predominates.”

Creighton, in contrast, said: “My primary interest as a painter is in the experience and memory of landscape, which gives rise to images that have an inherent force and beauty.”

l The exhibition runs from September 27 to January 18, 2009.

l Thursday, October 30, 2pm: A Thoughts on Abstraction Gallery Talk and presentation by Simon Crawford and John Creighton about abstract art and their current studio practice. £5. Mercer Art Gallery.

l Thursday, November 27, 2pm: Into Abstraction – Curator’s Choice Gallery Talk by Jane Sellars. Find out how this exhibition was put together. £4. Mercer Art Gallery.

The Mercer Art Gallery on Swan Road is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, Sundays 2pm to 5pm, closed Mondays except Bank Holidays. Admission free.