Work inspired by the Dorset coastline is on display in an art gallery.

Martyn Brewster's recent paintings, drawings and prints can be seen in Coast Lines at Sladers Yard in West Bay until November 12.

The exhibition will celebrate the artist's 70th birthday and showcases Martyn's richly coloured lyrical paintings, drawings and prints.

Martyn has lived in Dorset, near the cliffs, open skies and beaches of Southbourne for 35 years. He is inspired by the natural landscape, the sea and the light as well as by colour and paint itself.

He is an artist whose seductive use of colour and vigorous originality has produced paintings and drawings that are collected worldwide.

Martyn has recently been elected an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painter/PrintMakers.

He spends great deal of time outside drawing with pen and wash in his garden and on the Dorset coastline he loves mostly, between Bournemouth and Hengistbury Head.

Martin makes these figurative nature studies on site in front of the motif mostly in blacks, whites and tones searching to express the composition and drama he sees in the multiplicity of nature.

His drawings feed into ambitious abstract colour paintings in oil and acrylic. Colour is for him an emotional vehicle. He talks of colours ‘having a presence in themselves’.

The play between them within a composition has always fascinated him. He works on a group of paintings at the same time, boldly changing them, exploring and pushing until something magical happens and he finds his reward in the work.

Evocative and suggestive, Martin's paintings and drawings are open to the response of the viewer.

His recent work has a fascinating depth of field that is said to 'draw you in like fine music'.

Promoters say: "Confident and exploratory, his paintings sustain interest, gaining in momentum the more you look at them. Vivid colour combines with more muted tones of light and dark, the translucent and the opaque, the slab and the floating line, creating dynamic canvases."

Martyn Brewster was born in Oxford in 1952. He studied Art and Design in Hertfordshire and Fine Art (Painting) in Brighton followed by a Postgraduate diploma in Printmaking.

He has been working as a professional artist ever since with regular solo shows in museums and galleries in London and throughout the UK as well as exhibitions in USA, Canada and throughout Europe.

He has won numerous awards and his work is in private, public and corporate collections worldwide including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. His work is in the collections of Pallant House, Chichester and the Hepworth Wakefield. In London he is represented by the Portland Gallery and in New York by Waterhouse & Dodd.

The exhibition can be seen from 10am to 4pm Monday to Saturday and on Sunday from 12 noon to 4pm.