Posthumous exhibition by Pauline Leaver opening at Lion Salt Works Museum

From May 18 until July 5, the photography exhibition inspired by the River Weaver will be on display, organised as a tribute to Pauline by long-term friends and fellow artists, Celia Rowlands and Pamela Field.

Pauline, from Wistaston near Nantwich, was a successful former surgeon, and in her retirement she took an art foundation course at Northwich College of Art before gaining a fine art degree at Camberwell in London.

She used many different forms of artistic expression but while working on the Weaver project she settled on photography, enhancing the images digitally.

This exhibition features the photos she took of the River Weaver where she was inspired by the patterns and reflections in the flow of the water, in particular around locks, weirs, sluices and bridges, many of which she reworked on the computer to produce striking and evocative images.

Pamela, from Great Barrow, said: "For about 25 years, Pauline, Celia and I have collaborated on projects.

"We went out on location together, discussed and supported each other creatively, before developing our individual responses back in the studio.

"Every so often we would travel further a-field and spend a few days on a ‘working holiday’.

"It is a great sadness that the River Weaver Project was not completed."

Celia, from Frodsham, added: "I met Pauline while on the foundation course at Northwich in 1989-1990 and later shared a studio in Middlewich for a while.

"Pauline was very good company and immensely talented and imaginative.

"She was meticulous in her approach to everything she did as is apparent in the work in this exhibition.

"She would do extensive research into the history of locations we visited – it was another layer in her understanding of the objects she photographed and was a key part of her artistic inspiration, together with her love of nature."

In her lifetime, Pauline Leaver’s work was widely shown with that of Celia and Pamela.