BROWSE in any gallery or gift shop around the UK and the work of a North-East artist is likely to figure among the greetings cards and wildlife prints.

Alex Clark's easily recognisable animal and bird designs are so popular that she has 60,000 cards piled up in her small gallery at Stanhope, County Durham, waiting to go out to 300 outlets, including the Queen's gift shop at Sandringham.

Now, the 29-year-old is helping to put the region on the world map by selling her work to countries such as Japan, Iceland, France, Belgium and, crucially, North America, where a Canadian publisher is commissioning special designs for the massive US market.

Her detailed watercolours have evolved through years of training, first as a graphic artist and then through a biology degree at Newcastle University.

She started painting as a schoolgirl in Consett, County Durham, exhibiting in the annual Snods Edge Village Hall art show and selling her work to fund her studies.

Today, her originals fetch hundreds of pounds, and one particular favourite, an otter painted at the North Pennines Otter Trust in 1996, was sold for more than £1,000 last year in a silent auction she organised for the St Oswald's Hospice Jigsaw Appeal.

Alex commutes to Stanhope every day from her home in Ebchester. She had a small unit in the Durham Dales Centre for three years and opened the Lime Tree Gallery, at The Butts, in 2000.

This year's range of Christmas cards is her next project. She said: "I hardly ever get time to paint now, but it is important to keep ahead and to adapt the card designs to suit the market."

Summer opening times at the Lime Tree Gallery are 10.30am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday, and noon to 4.30pm on Sundays. Telephone (01388) 526110.