ONE of Cumbria’s best loved and most quirky artists is opening a new gallery and studio in the heart of the Lake District.

Thuline De Cock, known for her huge faces of Friesian cattle, Herdwick sheep and other animals, is retaining her original studio in Kendal alongside the new gallery on Main Road, not far from Windermere station.

Belgian-born Thuline, whose work is featured in many iconic Lakes venues including the Jumble Room in Grasmere, Sizergh Barn and the Sun Inn at Crook, has recently ventured into a new range of landscape art, featuring the hills and stone walls of her adopted home landscape.

She was also one of the artists chosen to paint a fantasy sheep for the Go Herdwick charity project and her offering – Beatrix – spent a summer outside the Cedar Manor Hotel at Windemere before being sold for £5,000 at a charity auction.

“I’m very excited about the new studio,” said Thuline, whose work is sold throughout the UK. “It will be on the tourist trail in one of the busiest towns in the Lakes.”

Thuline exhibits in a number of galleries throughout the UK and Ireland, and she has work in private collections in Britain and overseas.

She has had solo exhibitions in the north, including Percyhouse at Cockermouth, Gallery15 in Penrith, Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake, the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, and Liverpool’s Blue Coat Chambers.

She also had her work on show at other exhibition venues including the NEC in Birmingham, the Untitled Artist Fair in Chelsea, Stockbridge Gallery in Hampshire, and art fairs in London, Edinburgh, Bristol and Antwerp. Thuline is regularly commissioned to create paintings by clients and visitors.

Thuline is married to another artist, D C Hill, whose work will also be on show in the new studio.

“The great thing about the new space, apart from the big walls, is that I will be able to run small workshops, with up to six people at a time, in the gallery’s second room,” said Thuline.

For more details and commissions see www.thuline.com