LEONIE Rutter's paintings show the delicate play of light on the landscape, seductive, engaging abstract paintings that are inspired by nature and have a beautiful ethereal quality.

She paints primarily with acrylics and uses a combination of acrylic compounds and glazes to create a rich tapestry of colour and depth of texture.

The full extent of Leonie's creative talent can be seen in Play of Light, her solo exhibition running at Leck Gallery, near Kirkby Lonsdale, until September 15.

All her paintings are deeply personal and are intended to evoke the emotions she experienced at the locations or at the time she was painting.

Having painted and drawn since she was a young child, her painting style has developed over the years to be increasingly abstractive and expressionistic, influenced by contemporary artists from around the world, including Australian Anita Hochman, Rick Edmonds of New Zealand, and Carol Nelson, from the United States.

Her career as an engineer has taken her to Scotland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands, from where she continued to explore the outdoors. However, she has recently returned to her home country and has settled with her husband near Kirkby Lonsdale.

Leonie is also a ceramicist and first learned to throw pots at evening classes in Scotland. Her love of clay and ceramics developed further while living in New Zealand, where she was an active member of the regional potters association. Leonie’s ceramics have moved more now towards more organic, sculptural, hand built or modified thrown forms, inspired by natural forms such as the human figure, seed pods and flower heads.

Over the last few years she has started working with alternative firing techniques such as black firing, saggar and barrel firing, and she's currently setting up her studio where she plans to explore more of these techniques.

Leonie’s ceramics and paintings have been exhibited in galleries in New Zealand and in shared exhibitions in New Zealand and the Netherlands.

A selection of Leonie's ceramics will also be on show at Leck Gallery.

For further information about Leonie's work visit her Facebook page: facebook.com/leonierutterart.