A BEWDLEY artist has donated a painting fuelled by her anger over proposed changes to Kidderminster Library’s gallery to the Mayor’s Parlour.

Kay Wood was so passionate about the fight to keep the art space gallery on the top floor of the library she put all her frustrations about the proposal into the painting.

Worcestershire County Council’s planning and regulatory committee voted last month to move the library’s gallery to the first floor of the building to make way for offices for its staff.

Mrs Wood, who has a studio at her home, used acrylics, ink and collage to create the piece, which is of the Grim Reaper with an empty picture frame and a rat inside the frame devouring the gallery.

She donated it to the Mayor’s Parlour after Mayor John Aston took a liking to the piece during Kidderminster Art Society’s annual exhibition at the gallery.

Mrs Wood said she decided to create the painting following the first public meeting outside the library gallery last summer.

“I was angry at the fact that the [county council] wanted to move the gallery. Over the next few days the anger seemed to result in a painting.

“The other inspiration was finding out that the Kidderminster town motto is ‘in art and industry we flourish’. I changed it on the painting to ‘without art and industry we die’.

“It depicts my anger at the fact that there was nothing we could do. It’s such a loss to the community.

“I visit the gallery and I know other people who used it for music and people who used it for their coffee meetings.

There is no other facility locally that can hold substantial exhibitions.”

The 65-year-old added that it took her about two weeks to create the art work .

“I was so taken up with doing it, I couldn’t rest until it was done,” she said. “I was honoured that the Mayor liked the painting. I didn’t expect it at all. It was very much my personal reaction. It’s not an easy painting to like.”