New year, new campaign - and Edward King aims to top 2004. No easy task, as the Abbot Hall Art Gallery director says last year's Walter Sickert show landed some of the best national press coverage ever achieved by a gallery outside London.

Also, the Lakeland Arts Trust's other venue, Blackwell, enjoyed a 20 per cent increase in visitors and, "judging by the growing number of our Friends and Patrons', interest in the arts locally is very much alive and well," enthuses Edward.

Looking ahead, the forward-thinking Mr King seems to have lined up another fabulous selection of exhibitions that will no doubt have art lovers, and those who appreciate the finer things in life, beating a path to both the acclaimed Kendal art gallery and the Blackwell Arts and Crafts house at Bowness.

I'm also delighted to report that there are plenty of educational activities and opportunities for the county's young creators, with the emphasis on drawing, in the gallery's forthcoming programme.

Adds Edward: "We will be working with secondary schools on a special project looking at drawing. This will culminate in an exciting exhibition at the end of the year showing the wide range of drawing by the leading artists in Britain today.

"The exhibition will include some examples of the students' work shown alongside more famous names."

To get 2005 off to a flying start, the Kendal art gallery opens on January 18 with a show of work by Nicola Hicks.

One of the country's foremost sculptors, she moved recently from London to Cumbria.

Judging from what I've glimpsed so far in the exhibition catalogue, Nicola is set to make a momentous impact with some of the most imaginative, romantic and expressive sculptural pieces I've seen.

Fourteen sculptures will be on display, made by Nicola in the last eight years, with some new works, including Adoration (2004), showing for the first time.

The Appleby-based sculptor has also produced new and dynamic large-scale charcoal drawings specifically for the exhibition at Abbot Hall. As well as giving an invaluable insight into the artist's working practice, the drawings illustrate her instinctive understanding of human and animal forms. Often executed in plaster and straw, her sculptures possess an unusual and striking combination, which gives her work a rough and sketchy' quality.

Her most recent pieces feature strange creatures with mysterious symbolic references. These powerful works, such as Limbic Champion (2003) and The Man Who Loved Cats and The Woman Who Loved Dogs (1998), will be shown together with more classic' sculptures like Old Horse (2003).

Born in London, Nicola studied sculpture at Chelsea School of Art (1978-1982) before taking an MA at the Royal College of Art.

Although figurative sculpture was apparently unfashionable while she was studying, Nicola was encouraged by artists like Elisabeth Frink to persevere with her highly individual work.

Since her first breakthrough exhibition at the Angela Flowers Gallery in 1984, her work has been phenomenally successful and shown throughout Europe and America.

In spring, Abbot Hall will stage a show by another hot talent - Sean Scully - much sought after, particularly in America.

Sean is mooted as one of the most important abstract artists working today, a powerful painter who had a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia, as well as a room dedicated to his work at Tate Modern.

His monumental canvases, with their interlocking bars of earthy colour, reflect his early life as well as later influences.

Although born in Dublin, Sean was raised in London. He attended Croydon Art College in the late 1960s, before studying at Newcastle.

He moved to New York in 1975, and became an American citizen eight years later.

As well as large-scale oil paintings, there will be a selection of his delicate watercolours, pastels and etchings.

Meanwhile, there will be plenty going on at Blackwell too. Several more original pieces of furniture have been added to the rooms, as well as important and beautiful decorative objects of the period.

Exhibitions will focus mainly on craft, starting with the work of ten contemporary jewellers and including shows later in the year by two of Britain's leading potters, Kate Malone and Edmund de Waal.

For further details contact Abbot Hall on 01539-722464 or Blackwell on 015394-46139.