TRIBUTES have been paid to one of the North-East's most celebrated artists who captured life in the mines on canvas - and was busy painting until the day before he died.

The death yesterday of Tom McGuinness comes months before a major retrospective of his life was planned in honour of his 80th birthday - an event organisers say will still go ahead.

Last night his son, Shaun, said he had arrived at his father's house in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, to find his paintbox open and a canvas on an easel in the kitchen.

He said: "There was a painting he had started on the easel. It looked as though he just put down his brushes and was pottering about and was going to return."

Mr McGuinness said: "We were going through his sketchbooks. There was enough material to have lasted him another 200 years. He never repeated himself in his work. He always had something different to say."

Mr McGuinness, an art teacher in Scotland, said: "He was a fantastic dad, but also an incredible grandfather.

"He spent a lot of time and effort with them and encouraged them all to draw."

Tom McGuinness was born in 1926, in Witton Park, County Durham, and was educated at St Chad's Roman Catholic School.

After leaving school in 1940, he worked in the timber trade until, in 1944, he joined the coal industry as a Bevin Boy. He remained in mining for 39 years.

He had always been interested in drawing at school, but had no formal training until his colliery training officer advised him to attend evening classes at Darlington Art College. He later became a member of the community arts group, Spennymoor Settlement.

Local portrait commissions and invitations to show in other exhibitions followed the purchase, in 1949, by Shipley Art Gallery of Miner and Child.

In the 1950s, he began to paint in oils, moving on in the 1970s to experiment with lithography and etching. In recent years, his work encompassed religious themes, as well as documenting the decline of the once-thriving mining communities.

Dr Robert McManners, who co-wrote a book about Mr McGuinness and had known him since the 1970s, said he would be greatly missed.

He said: "He was a very quiet, unassuming man with a subtle sense of humour. He had humility and he was so perceptive in his art. He was very proud of his family and a lot of his early pictures were of his family."

Mr McGuinness, whose wife, Cathy, died in 1982, leaves two sons, Shaun and Anthony, a daughter, Corinne, and five grandchildren.

The retrospective will be held in the McGuinness Gallery, in Bishop Auckland Town Hall, from April 3 to April 22.

A book called McGuinness, by Robert McManners and Gillian Wales, will be published to coincide with the exhibition.