DALES artist, Alan Turnbull, is taking part in the 300-year celebrations of culture and the arts in the Russian city of St Petersburg.

An exhibition of his work, On the Road to Tarascon - Etchings after Van Gogh - is on show until the end of the month in a gallery off Nevskiy Prospekt.

Mr Turnbull, who lives in Bellerby, is a part-time lecturer at Newcastle University whose speciality subject is Van Gogh.

The exhibition, which took a year to complete, is composed of 25 etchings chosen from a total of 60 prints and drawings. It was initially inspired by his studies of the French painter.

As a teenager, it was seeing a picture by Van Gogh which encouraged him to continue with his own drawing, and this exhibition took as its starting point an unfulfilled plan by Van Gogh to make a series of etchings based on work he had done in Provence. Vincent died a month after writing to his brother about his idea.

Mr Turnbull took on the promise, and travelled to the South of France, discovering with excitement the Van Gogh motifs of bridges, canals and landscape vistas, virtually unchanged since Vincent painted them more than 100 years ago.

After preparatory research, which included copying from original Van Gogh work in Paris and London, Mr Turnbull began to make original etchings to produce black and white prints.

"It was a conscious decision not to use colour," he said. "These pieces are not a pastiche of Van Gogh's work, but are original, reflecting my own surroundings and temperament. Also, I was fascinated by exploiting what etching had to offer."

The images portray the artist's deep feeling for the Yorkshire landscape, as well as making a link with subjects found in Van Gogh's pictures. They range from the large Snowfield with Crows, showing striking contrasts of shade found within a northern winter, to the more familiar Sunflowers.

Said Mr Turnbull: "I called the exhibition Road to Tarascon because that is the title of Van Gogh's only self-portrait which includes his whole figure. And it is about being on the road, metaphorically and literally.

"I was on the road after Van Gogh and my own roads, and crossroads too. This is what my work reflects."

The show in St Petersburg was made possible with support from the Arts Council and Yorkshire and Humberside Arts.

Mr Turnbull has lived at Bellerby for 20 years and made many drawings, paintings and prints of nearby woods and fields. He is now working on a series of landscapes inspired by a set of old rusty tools once used by workers in Wensleydale.