Katharine Holmes
(b. 1962)
The rugged landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales are the focal point of the latest art exhibition at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa. The exhibition will run from February - May 2026.
The Spring 2026 ‘Art in the Atrium’ gallery display at the spa resort is celebrating the work of two renowned artists with close connections to the Craven district of North Yorkshire.
The gallery is featuring Katharine Holmes, who currently works from her studio at the Malham cottage where her mother and grandmother lived and painted before her, and Anna Adams, whose watercolour paintings of Ribblesdale, as well as her ceramics and poetry, won widespread acclaim.
Gavaganart, in Lancaster, works with artists from throughout the British Isles with an emphasis on artists from the North of England with many artists based in either Yorkshire, Lancashire or Cumbria.
In partnership with Gavagan Art, Art in the Atrium at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa provides an accessible, free and informal way of being able to see a display of fine art in the resorts' spacious Atrium.
The distinctive limestone environment around Malham Cove and Gordale Scar feature in many of Katharine’s paintings. Her large oil painting, ‘Limestone and Rain’ forms the centrepiece of the latest exhibition.
As part of the gallery’s ceramics showcase section, a host of ceramics, small scale paintings and a selection of Anna Adam’s poetry books will also be on display. Anna and her husband, the painter Norman Adams RA, made a farmhouse close to Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales their main base from the mid-1950s.
This is already the eighth independent, free and open art exhibition that we have put on here in the atrium at Low Wood Bay in the last two years. They continue to prove highly popular with both guests and visitors.
Just like the spectacular landscapes of the Lake District, the dales have their own distinctive limestone formations, rolling hills and valleys which have inspired and attracted artists such as Katharine and Anna for hundreds of years. It’s a pleasure to be able to put their works on display here for more people to see and to learn about the artists and their careers.”
Executive chairman at English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues Simon Berry
There is much to see and marvel at with Katharine and Anna’s work exhibited in the latest gallery at Low Wood Bay.
It is a pleasure to present Katharine’s work to a new audience. She is fascinated by the effects of light and her paintings are as much about atmosphere as they are about the physical features of the landscape.
She works in a range of media from ink, watercolour and gouache on paper to oil or acrylic on canvas. And alongside her Yorkshire works, the exhibition includes drawings and paintings of other locations around Britain.
Anna’s sensitive figurative works in clay, especially her ceramic birds, are a striking example of her ability to capture the essence of the world around her. The display includes birds, animals and examples of her watercolour paintings and prints.”
Mary Gavagan from Gavagan Art
Katharine Holmes (b. 1962) is best known for her paintings and drawings of her native Yorkshire landscape. A graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, she worked in galleries in Kendal and Glasgow before returning to Yorkshire in 1990.
“Growing up in a multi-generational household I was surrounded by the paintings of my mother and grandmother. My home studio was once my grandmother, Constance Pearson’s. Like Constance, I paint outside in all weathers and return to the shelter of the same studio to work on larger paintings on canvas.”
“I like the simplicity of working with ink, a few brushes, a pen or maybe a stick I’ve picked up to use as a drawing tool.
My paintings are often worked both inside, in the studio, and outside, in the landscape. As I work, the painting takes on a life of its own, evolving into an object with its own unique character. Using rags, brushes and palette knives, the painting emerges as I
build layers and glazes, scraping into the painting I work and rework.
In this way the paintings are like the landscape itself, worked and reworked by stone walls, well-worn tracks, green lanes and the play of light on a metal farm roof. We are both shaped through centuries of human presence.”
Katharine Holmes 2025
The house, High Barn Cottage, in Malham, North Yorkshire, which Katharine returned to, had been home to her mother Philippa, and grandmother Constance Pearson, both artists.
Katharine paints outside in all weathers and currently works from her studio at the Malham cottage where her mother and grandmother lived and painted before her. Beyond home and the familiar Katharine Holmes paints the wilder fringes of Britain and Ireland especially the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and South West Cornwall. She has made a living as an artist since the mid 1990s and has worked in Japan, Greece, Kenya, New England, Italy and throughout the British Isles. Widely exhibited and collected, her work is in many private and corporate collections.
Fascinated by the effects of light, the paintings are as much about atmosphere as they are about the physical features of the landscape. Working in a range of media from ink, watercolour and gouache on paper to oil or acrylic on canvas.
Anna Butt, was born in 1926 in Richmond, Surrey. She studied at Harrow Art School and Hornsey College of Art, where she met her future husband the painter Norman Adams RA.
Anna worked as a designer, a freelance artist and art teacher. Throughout her life she produced paintings and ceramics based on a sensitive and close observation of nature. Many people know Anna for her watercolour paintings of Ribblesdale and her terracotta figurative works of animals and birds. These were mainly produced at Horton-in Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire, Anna and Norman’s family home, close to Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales.
A published poet, Anna began to write seriously in both prose and verse in the early 1960s. In later years she concentrated on poetry and prose writing.
Anna’s first poem was printed in 1969 and Peterloo Press published her first book, A Reply to Intercepted Mail, in 1979 as part of its Peterloo Poets series. Anna was poetry editor of The Green Book from 1989 to 1992, and also a member of the Poetry Society and the Piccadilly Poets Committee.
Anna published a number of books with her husband Norman, including ‘Life on Limestone: A year in the Yorkshire Dales’, featuring her writing along with his watercolours. An earlier publication was Island Chapters, documenting their visits to the island of Scarp in the Outer Hebrides.
It is intended that this exhibition will provide an insight into the various aspects of Anna’s creative work.
Thank you to Anna’s son Mr. Ben Adams for all his assistance with this exhibition.
Mary Gavagan, January 2026.
Other artists whose work curated by Gavagan Art, that have had exhibitions as part of the Art in the Atrium gallery.
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