Lanarkshire was built by coal, steel and determination – only the last remains. It's a vast and surprisingly ancient county in the heart of Scotland. The Romans didn't last long here, but left some notable ruins. It is dominated by Glasgow with its School of Art, Glasgow Boys and Girls and contemporary stars.

I grew up in Glasgow's orbit in a former mining village, then in the shadow of the famous Ravenscraig Steelworks. Heavy industry was our story – I describe the second sunsets from the molten steel in my memoir, Maggie & Me.

Artists have always drawn on this heritage and responded to it, even if only to resist it with some pastoral pre-industrial fantasy. Here are eight artworks mining this rich and sometimes unstable seam. One city, however starry, is not the whole county, so I've given Glasgow only cameos.

The Falls of the Clyde by Joseph Mallord William Turner

J. M. W. Turner was a voracious traveller, ranging round these islands and across Europe, hungrily sketching views to be digested back at his studio. He made his first extended tour of Scotland in the summer of 1801.

The Falls of Clyde, near Lanark, were more popular with tourists then than now. There are four named Falls and their behaviour changes with rain and the seasons. I remember being afraid of the roaring water when taken to see them as a wee boy. Years later, I saw a print of the Falls and was astonished that such a famous painter had stood where I had.

I suspect this oil painting shows Corra Linn, the lowest of the Falls. It's hard to tell water from air, sky from land. The whole thing is elemental. Turner has captured the rare summer sun refracted through the boiling, roiling waters, somehow taming them. There appear to be people on a path looking up, themselves reduced to an outline, nothing compared to the majesty of the Falls.

The Miner by William Baillie

My village, Newarthill, was built for and by coal miners. On my walk to school, I imagined deep shafts beneath my feet. By then, the 1980s, there were no more mines or miners (though still steelworkers, like my Dad).

The young man in this picture is ghostly – alabaster emerging from carbon. His skin seems to light up what feels like a pit closing around him, there is a defiance in his brightness but also a resignation and exhaustion in his eyes. He is drained of colour but his muscles and bones are strong.

William Baillie was born in 1905 in Larkhall, not far from me. The son of a miner, he would have known the unique dangers and demands of this work. Is the subject real or imagined? I feel he's totemic of all these men. The choice of a young man suggests vigour and determination, the possibility of a future despite the encroaching darkness.

Alison Watt (b.1965), Artist by Alison Watt

Like The Miner, Artist is a confronting study in pallor but also strength.

Alison Watt was 20 and training at Glasgow School of Art when she did this self-portrait. She was, as her pallor suggests, unwell. She holds her hand across her forehead as if to take her own temperature but perhaps also to show that she is thinking deeply. The close framing is claustrophobic, as if there isn't quite enough air around her to breathe. It feels feverish. Is that a sheen of sweat on her upper lip? She makes you want to reach in and open what appears to be a door or window. But, like the Miner, she holds our gaze – she will get better, she's determined. Perhaps the fever is about to break, the moment about to shift?

Brandon Street, Pierced Wall by Charles Anderson

Every Saturday morning, my Mum took me into the nearby town of Motherwell to help do the big shop at the supermarket. To get there, we walked past the shops on Brandon Parade. And above them floated a massive mural – my first encounter with modern art.

At 300 feet long and nine feet high, the mural was suspended above all the shops and cafes. Although cast from concrete (painted white), it looked light and playful. It showed what might be stylised elephants trumpeting in triumph. Or letters from the alphabet – T, J, I, M and N – all frolicking together. If there is a repeating pattern, I have yet to find it. Designed by Charles Anderson, it was installed in 1970. Anderson's work graced schools, supermarkets and institutions across Lanarkshire.

In The Swimming Pool (Rainbow Slides), 25 miles away in Stirling, he depicts swimmers, working up to diving into waters and then striking out – the concrete form somehow not weighing them or the composition down. It has the energy and warm sun of Duncan Grant's Bathing.

Dalziel Co-op Women's Guild Banner by unknown artist

The Co-operative Women's Guild was founded in 1883 by working-class women to secure representation as they became a bigger part of the workforce. Women's Guilds became a feature of most local Co-op societies by the time the Motherwell branch made this banner. The women campaigned on so-called 'basket power' issues such as food prices, rent and health care. And, of course, for the vote.

We do not know the name of the maker but this was probably done by more than one pair of hands. It shows a romantic scene depicting the Roman bridge at nearby Bothwellhaugh. This bridge is much loved by artists.

There is a Roman fort nearby but the bridge itself is medieval. The Guilds were wrapped up in 2016, but the spirit of cooperation and radical inclusivity remains here.

Self Portrait by Dorothy Carleton Smyth

This self-portrait of barely suppressed mirth makes me giggle. What is amusing Dorothy Carleton Smyth? Of course, it calls to mind the Mona Lisa and maybe she's having a joke at her expense?

It's depressingly rare and refreshingly radical for a woman to show herself laughing in a self-portrait – especially in 1921. She might be in a theatre set done up to look like a studio – it is so vivid and full of props: paints, a sculpture to capture or simply inspire, books, the palette in her hand.

Like Alison Watt long after her, Smyth was a GSA graduate – theatre design was a part of her studies. She was to be the School's first female Director. Outgoing Director Francis Newbery wrote: 'Miss Smyth is a living force contained in a human body'. She was offered the post of Director but died, aged just 52, before she could take up the appointment. In this self-portrait, her vitality is gloriously undimmed.

Turning Hay by Millie Frood

Are these men Turning Hay or stoking fires? They are captured in frantic activity, their movement a blur, the way a bonfire-night sparkler seems to write in pure light. They are working together but head down, too busy to talk. This is a dance they've done before. It's also a dance that was coming to an end when Frood painted it in 1940. The fields, which covered the coal mines, were being rapidly industrialised – machines replacing men.

Frood was born in Motherwell and lived through this shift, dying when the Ravenscraig Steelworks was still lighting up the skies over the town where she was born. The trees marching in the corner might almost have uprooted themselves from across the Channel. This is Lanarkshire in conversation with the Loire.

A Stone for Ravenscraig by Stanley Wilson

Art and industry fuse movingly in this sculpture by Stanley Wilson. Made of Kilkenny fossil limestone, it was commissioned in 1989 for the Heriot-Watt University campus.

At the time of commission, Ravenscraig was resisting closure – my Dad and many others were striking. By the time the sculpture was installed, in 1992, the Ravenscraig was closed – from then on, there was no more molten steel lighting up our sky. Thousands lost their jobs.

Wilson's sculpture is a chain of three links rising up from the strong plinth: they are so closely knit and so strong that we cannot see any light between them. But the last link is broken – a link with a long industrial past that runs deep through time and into the earth, past coal and down to iron ore. That space invites the possibility of adding another link – the vast Ravenscraig site is now home to New College Lanarkshire, where students learn the industries of the future and also make art, music and stories.

Damian Barr, writer, broadcaster and journalist

This content was funded by the PF Charitable Trust