A CHANCE to see work by the late Darlington artist Geoff Morten will offer a glimpse into his experiences following a move to California in 2003.

Morten, who died in 2009 aged 62, was a highly respected and distinguished artist who had several exhibitions at the former Arts Centre in Vane Terrace, where he also ran adult education classes for aspiring printmakers, and at the former Myles Meehan Gallery in the Crown Street library.

He was a lecturer for ten years at Sunderland University, where the aptly titled Another Time/Another Place opened this week in the Design Centre Gallery. It runs until June 12.

Visitors familiar with his work in Britain will note how the change of scene and country brightened his colour palette and gave fresh and more optimistic impetus to themes of identity he had explored in paintings and etchings.

It has been arranged in conjunction with his widow, the ceramicist Jenny Morten, who returned to England and has settled in Bridlington.

As an adopted child, Morten knew nothing of his parentage, but growing up next to an air force base in the 1940s, he presumed that his father might have been a member of the Allied Forces and his mother a local girl.

His semi-abstract pictures, often in sombre tones, regularly conveyed a sense of struggle and tension, with a solitary figure only partially glimpsed amid confining fragments of structures.

Work produced after emigrating to live at La Selva Beach resulted from a daily diary of drawings and became lighter in colour and content. Some of the larger paintings have a theatricality about them reflecting his newfound interest in acting after joining a drama group.

Next month, from June 19-30, The Station in Richmond will show work by both Mortens in From Sea to Shire, featuring a different selection of Geoff's paintings, prints and etchings together with large hand-built pieces and small thrown porcelain by Jenny.