TO MARK the bicentenary of John Ruskin’s birth there will be scores of events held around the world throughout the year.

February 8, 2019, is the actual date and to mark the great man's 200th birthday the people of Coniston are planning a day of celebration. The Ruskin Museum and Brantwood, in partnership with Coniston schools, St Andrew's Church, the Village Institute and other community groups, will join together to pay tribute to John Ruskin, his life, his works and his legacy to the village.

Brantwood, the former home of John Ruskin, has a packed programme, which includes two of Cumbria's finest young painters exhibiting their work.

Through Floors, Within Rooms, is the first, from Ulverston's Stefan Orlowski, a terrific talent and dedicated oil painter. In conjunction with his ongoing investigation into figuration and portraiture, Stefan's exhibition - his inaugural show at Brantwood, running from February 16 until March 24 - will be of his incredibly sensitive, beautiful and sometimes disquieting portrait work.

It is also quite fitting that in the year John Ruskin is truly celebrated, another of the region's rising stars with huge potential, Daniel Cooper, shares the Brantwood spotlight with Stefan. Daniel exhibits in Brantwood's Severn Studio from June 8.

His relationship with Brantwood began in 2008 when he worked in the house and gallery. During his time walking around Brantwood and east of the lake, Daniel continued his own personal artistic practice by painting and drawing his observations of light, cloud and fell.

Meanwhile, Patricia Townsend's Black Sun, Blue Light, Moving Image and Installation finishes at Coniston's Brantwood on Sunday, February 3. Her work explores the ways in which landscape can affect us emotionally. The Black Sun part of the show refers to her first 4K (ultra-high definition) video, which shows a planet-like object slowly moving towards and away from the viewer, subtly changing as it does so. It calls for particular viewing conditions to appreciate the very slow and strange changes in the image. The second half of Black Sun is The Transience of Wonder, an installation of 50 'shards of sky' created by mounting narrow sections of photographs of the sky under thick perspex.