Sarah-Jane Szikora has announced that the success of her exhibitions is due to the quality of her art materials.

The Gateshead artist showed gratitude to Winsor & Newton, a manufacturer of fine art products with a Royal Warrant, for supplying her with art materials for her Smarty Pants exhibition.

Szikora's exhibitions such as Smarty Pants are famed for featuring paintings which incorporate roguish gingerbread men, cheeky confectionary figures and larger than life depictions of ladies and gentlemen.

She said: "I would like to say a very big special thank you to Winsor and Newton who have generously sponsored the exhibition catalogue and whose marvellous materials allow me to keep splatting and daubing."

The naughtiest Sarah-Jane Szikora paintings include 'Bare Breads; which depictssunbathing gingerbread men 'Rude Food', a picture of a gingerbread man pole dancing and 'Mischief of Mice', a portrait of a pied piper gingerbread man.

Szikora told the Newcastle Journal newspaper that she chose to humanise food such as gingerbread men in her paintings because they have an imaginary personality which can be manipulated with art materials.

She said: "I think it's a nostalgic thing. I think people are sympathetic towards something from their childhood. And you can make gingerbread men do lots of things - everything that a human being can do."

The northern artist told the arts and culture journal Fally Rag that she hopes that her light-hearted paintings provide people with happiness in times of crisis and despair as that is the main aim of her work.

She told Fally Rag: "The world doesn't owe you happiness; you must earn it. Get on that journey of self-discovery and change something. Art helped me to be happy, so hopefully by offering my results, I can pass a little bit of that on.

"The world has seen enough misery without Tracy Emin's dirty knickers thrown in."

Szikora has revealed that life drawing classes at the Cleveland College of Art provided her with the inspiration to illustrate the human body with art materials which has now evolved to creating comedy confectionary figures.

Szikora's work has been shown in several major exhibitions across Britain and has also been displayed regularly in, Selfridges and Harrods since becoming a professional artist.

Winsor & Newton was founded in 1832 by William Winsor and Henry Newton and was originally located at Newton's home in London, which was then part of an artists' quarter in which John Constable had a studios.