CHRISSIE Gittins is a writer who was born and brought up in Bury. She now lives in south London, but regularly visits Ramsbottom.

When she heard about the council's plan to sell the Lowry painting A RIver Bank, she visited the art gallery to see it for herself.

Here are her thoughts about the council's proposal, along with a poem she has written, inspired by the news.

Chrissie writes poetry, radio drama and short stories for adults, and poetry for children.

She is currently working with a BBC Radio producer on an idea for a play about the Chatterton Riots in 1826.

A River Bank, L.S. Lowry, 1947, Bury Art Gallery

This painting, banished to the store

on council command, smoulders

unseen, unshown, hidden

with its shame.

The chimneys smoking to the sky,

the foreground figures

stooped in disbelief.

The gap on the gallery wall

already filled another council stroke

with scenes of other streets,

by later local painters.

Lowry's white river, white skies,

white field are whitewashed

from this space.

Low factories, dark boats,

bowing with disgrace. Chrissie Gittins, March 9, 2006

LOWRY was a significant figure in the cultural life of Bury. He visited Bury Art Gallery and he was president of Bury Arts Society. He also taught at Bury Arts and Crafts and was a well-known and well-liked figure among Bury's artistic community of the 1950s and 1960s.

He brought along three paintings to the gallery and in 1951 A River Bank was chosen and bought for £175.

What right does the chief executive of the council have to override this transaction?

The painting enriches the cultural lives of Bury residents, and its visitors adults and children alike. This includes the well off and the vulnerable. The chief executive gives the fact that A River Bank falls outside the main Victorian thrust of the collection as one of his reasons for choosing this painting. But there are works in the gallery from the 16th, 18th, 19th 20th and 21st centuries.

It is an evolving gallery; when I visited, a class was painting from life, and a whole gallery was given over to contemporary photography. A painting which falls outside the Victorian era isn't a less valuable painting A River Bank is a historic part of the collection which has an integral role in the education programme of the gallery.

If the painting is sold, Bury art gallery would lose its accreditation with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; it would cease to be a bone fide museum, it would lose credibility and it would not be eligible for certain grants.

It would also go against all the professional ethics of the gallery staff, and the gallery would lose the respect of the Museums community.

I understand that Bury Council is in financial trouble. What are other councils with similar problems doing? Can another solution be found?

CHRISSIE GITTINS 24 Elsinore Road Forest Hill London