OF ALL the art exhibitions on the visual arts calendar coming up this year one that looms large is the first retrospective exhibition of the work of the late, and highly thought of, Christine Matthiessen.

Running at Kendal Museum from Tuesday, March 17, 1950 to 2013 Habitats in Focus has been curated by Christine's artist friend Sally Bamber and Christine's husband Peter Matthiessen, encouraged by the Green Door artists' collective.

Christine began her career as an industrial designer. She worked at the Royal College of Art and specialised in designs for disabled people and for developing countries. She first began to realise her artistic potential while living in Botswana in the late 1970s, and a few of her early watercolours, and prints taken from them, are on display in the Kendal exhibition.

Her artistic career really took off in the late 1980s when she was living on the Essex coast near Burnham-on-Crouch, and became fascinated by the salt marsh habitats on her doorstep.

Her images of these and other natural environments were closely observed and became a kind of trademark – an intense focus on small pieces of nature rather than on broadly sweeping landscapes.

In 2001, Christine (or Winks as she was known to friends), moved to Cumbria and soon after joined Green Door.

A dedicated and self-taught artist, Christine's watercolours are truly a joy to behold. She travelled far and wide - across Britain as well as to places such as Africa, India, the Himalayas and the Arctic, filling numerous sketchbooks with rapidly executed studies made in sometimes challenging circumstances, some of which are on display in the exhibition.

Husband Peter said that Christine was a prolific Lake District artist whose work was mainly concerned with the ecology of the natural world.

He added: "When she died in 2013, I naturally wanted to commemorate her life in some way, and when I was approached by Green Door with the same wish, the obvious answer was to put together a retrospective exhibition of her life’s work. As soon as the idea was out of my mouth, I realised that I would have to organise such an exhibition, something I had never done.

"I approached Sally Bamber to act as a co-curator, and to my great pleasure and relief, she said 'yes.'

"Kendal Museum agreed to host the exhibition, which we decided to call Habitats in Focus, and we were away. It has been hard work tracking down some of her best paintings and textile hangings and persuading people to lend them for the exhibition’s duration, but the exhibition will also contain other works of Christine’s which will be on sale."

To tie in with the exhibition Sally has put together an amazing brochure of images from Christine’s career.

Kendal Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10.30am-5pm.