BLACK Country artist Robert Perry is putting the finishing touches to a major new exhibition which is set to run at Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

The internationally acclaimed Wordsley-based artist, famed for painting on location from his studio van, will be exhibiting his distinctive impressionist-style landscapes at the gallery in Lichfield Street from Saturday May 20 to July 9.

Work on display will include both retrospective and current pieces representing some 240,000 miles of travelling and painting around Europe from the 1990s to the present day.

The show, entitled An artist from the Black Country, will feature an array of vistas of the Black Country and West Midlands and beyond including a striking, specially-commissioned nightscape of Wolverhampton which will be donated to hang in the Mayor's parlour in the Wolverhampton Civic Centre after the exhibition.

Robert said: "It also includes some of my battlefield work from The Somme, Verdun and the Second World War sites - Normandy and Auschwitz - and work I've done in the Wyre Forest and Wales, on the theme of sunlight. There's also work in connection with my interest in motorcycling, so it's quite broad in context."

The 72-year-old, who is a prominent member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, will be at the official launch of the free exhibition at 2.30pm on Saturday June 3

Many of his paintings will be available to buy through Artifex Gallery, Sutton Coldfield, afterwards.