IMAGES of suffering and oppression on show in Bishop Auckland town hall recall the story of a remarkable woman, Tisa von der Schulenburg, who spent several years in the 30s in County Durham.

Born a countess in 1903 on the family estate near the Baltic, she emigrated to this country with her Jewish husband in 1934 to escape the political situation in Germany. She died earlier this year aged 97.

In old age, she remembered her years in England as her happiest, where she formed a lifelong association with the mining community in Durham.

These are her words: "An artist has to live with the working classes to be anything more than a dilettante. I remember standing in front of 30 men in caps and mufflers, their faces thin and emaciated.

"I was struck dumb. I had never seen such poverty, never experienced such courage. Men would stand in the streets - hundreds of them - in the rain. The miners would walk through the town black because there were no pit baths."

In 1936, she stayed in the Spennymoor settlement and taught unemployed miners in their clubs how to carve. She talked with them, sketched them and made friends with them.

Later, after returning to Germany, she became one of the first artists to tackle the Holocaust thematically. She converted to Roman Catholicism and became a nun, teaching art in a school attached to her convent, and later working as a graphic designer and sculptress. Her favourite subjects were borderline situations in human existence.

The Holocaust and other themes of oppression and injustice drawn from Vietnam, Chile, Germany - and Durham - infuse her work (as shown above).

The exhibition, Sketches from Life, consists mainly of lithographs, and includes images from these places as well as pictures on loan from the Holocaust museum. It is on show until next Friday.