Keith Woodhouse, the second son of ROGER HILTON and ROSE HILTON, changed his name in 2010.

His early years were influenced by the colourful abstracts of his father, and poets, actors and other painters formed an important part of his life. He went to school in Penzance, then attended London University to read English. He was subsequently accepted into Falmouth School of Art but in 1988, struggling with his mental health, he was confined to psychiatric care. This continued off and on for the next 23 years. He currently lives in a care home in Devon, where he continues to paint and write.

Aside from his painting practice, Keith also writes poetry. Over one hundred of his poems have been published in magazines, journals, anthologies and zines.

Hannah Woodman was born in Totnes. She studied at Exeter College of Art & Design, and then at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Subsequently she trained as a teacher at the London Institute of Education, and went on to teach and lecture in schools, museums and galleries for six years, after which she turned to painting full-time.

A landscape painter, she works from Jubilee Warehouse in Penryn, a beautiful waterside studio complex. She has enjoyed a series of sell-out one-woman shows. Woodman's work is held in public and private collections both in the UK and abroad.

Woodman is a tutor at Newlyn School of Art (2016).

An artist, etcher and illustrator, Patrick Woodroffe was born in Halifax and attended Leeds University, where he read French and German. He specialised in science-fiction fantasy images bordering on the surreal, and was a self-taught artist. He married in 1964 and honeymooned in Cornwall, where he remained for the rest of his days.

In 1972 he gave up his work as a language teacher, in order to focus full-time on his art. His love of the irrational was fostered by Sir Roland PENROSE, the Surrealist artist and critic. It was through Penrose's influence that Patrick had his first solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 1972 his work was shown at the Covent Garden Gallery. His career included the creation of covers for a considerable number of science fiction and fantasy books published by Pan Books. He also created album covers for rock stars.

In the early 1990s a retrospective of his work was held at the Chateau de Gruyeres in Switzerland, covering the walls of the former prison tower. This attracted 150,000 visitors and led to the formation of a permanent exhibition of his work there. Following this, he exhibited widely in Switzerland, Germany and France.

In Cornwall Woodroffe's work was exhibited at Falmouth's National Maritime Museum. In 2012 he took part in 'Soaring Spirits' at Falmouth Art Gallery.

Sarah Woods is based in Newlyn. She graduated from Falmouth University in 2016 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art.

He first exhibited in 1889 when he was living in Newbury, and his first RA success was in 1922, by which time he was at Burnham, Buckinghamshire. By 1927 he was resident at Seaford in Sussex.

His subjects were taken from all over Southern England, and it can only be assumed that he joined STISA after a visit to St Ives, as no other Cornish connection has been established. Due to distance, however, he was not a regular exhibitor.

Caro Woods' work is concerned with the 'formal aspects of landscape, as well as the hidden structures in the anatomy of the land.'  She has exhibited widely throughout Europe and Africa, as well as the UK and Channel Islands.  Her commissions include assignments for local interest magazines, and the illustration of a gardening book with over 80 line drawings.  Woods is also an experienced teacher, whose community work has strengthened her belief in the therapeutic power of art.

Alongside her art practice, she runs experimental workshops on themes based on the local environment.

Chloe Woods aims to capture the colours and textures of the Cornish coastline in her paintings.

An advertisement in the St Ives Times (1917) was for an Artist's Exhibition at The Cottage, Treveal, 11th-14th September, with Meredith STARR, Horace J Wooley and Lady Mary STARR. The works were said to "demonstrate new methods of execution and conception."

'Jim Woolley is a painter of landscape and a sculptor in stone and clay with a studio at Maker Heights on the Rame Peninsula, southeast Cornwall. Since visiting West Penwith on a short painting trip in the winter of 2004/05, his main body of work has been "en plein air" oil studies of coastal Cornwall.'

A full resume of his art training and his extensive exhibition list is available on his website, from which the above statement is taken.
 

http://www.jimwoolley.co.uk/ 

Paintings by this artist form part of the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Falmouth.

According to the 1891 and 1901 Censuses, Dorothy Worden was born in Newcastle on Tyne, Northumberland, however it has not been possible as yet to trace her family located there, and it may be that they lived there only briefly. One Worden family, the head being a photographer, from Camborne, Cornwall had briefly re-located to Newcastle, and it may be that Dorothy had some Cornish family, but this is conjecture only at present.

In 1891 the artist, age 23, is listed as lodging in Hammersmith, London. By 1893 she had become a member of the St Ives Arts Club (STIAC) and her paintings, some of which were St Ives subjects, were being exhibited at the RCPS (1893,1894 and 1896), the RBA and the County Fisheries Exhibition at Truro (1893).

In 1896, Dorothy Worden married the artist William E OSBORN, who had also been working in St Ives, at Exeter, and it seems that the couple settled in a small village, Withycombe Raleigh, near Exmouth, which became his exhibiting address up until about 1901-2.  In 1901, Dorothy is recorded in the Census as a lodger with a slightly older couple in Ludlow, Herefordshire (now Shropshire). In 1902 Will Osborn also uses Ludlow as an exhibiting address for London shows of work.

Dorothy Osborn continued to paint after her marriage.  In the summer of 1905 she exhibited watercolours at the Ryder Gallery, London and these were positively reviewed in The Studio (1905). She remarried in January 1907, after her first husband's death the previous year, to Commander Harold Ernest Browne RN of Devon. 

Artist potter with Leach 1937.

 Guy Worsdell was born in York to a Quaker railway family. During the 1930s, while living in Hampstead, he studied at London's Central School of Art. During World War II he moved to Highgate, next door to his father's friend Heath Robinson, who encouraged Guy's art career and probably got him his first book-illustrating job on The Motorist's Companion. He volunteered for the RAF but was rejected because of his short sight. He spent the war as a special constable and glass factory worker.

After the war and his parents' death, Guy acquired Wastrel Studio, overlooking Porthgwidden beach in St Ives. Here he became part of an artistic community which included Barbara Hepworth and Bernard Leach, both of whom became close friends. He also had a studio in his London house at 17 Bedford Gardens, Kensington, where his neighbours included the portrait photographer Madame Yevonde. His career flourished, with regular exhibitions in St Ives as a member of the Penwith Society, and in London and internationally as a significant figure in Free Painters and Sculptors.

Both in oils and wood engravings, Guy specialised in still lifes of contemporary studio ceramics. He was also a landscape painter in a lyrical Romantic Modern style, and his works often included steam-trains or their delineating plumes of smoke, as a nod to his family background of railway locomotive design.

With his partner Sybil Hanson (who worked at the V&A) in the 1950s and 1960s, Guy built up a remarkable collection of twentieth-century studio ceramics. He was an accomplished musician, playing early music on the harpsichord. He died from a heart attack shortly after his 70th birthday.

A painting, The Glacier's Lances (1964) an abstract oil on board, is part of the permanent collection of Cornwall Council.

 

A pupil of the FORBES SCHOOL in 1936.

Tony Worthington has exhibited his raku ceramics at Waterside Gallery, St Mawes.

Bobby Wotnot is an abstract artist and musician who moved to St Ives in 2010. He has worked as an Adult Education tutor in art and guitar, and is a member of the Barnoon Workshop in St Ives. He became a member of STISA in 2020.

The artist was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester. During his childhood the family moved quite frequently, before settling in Sheffield. Wragg suffered from bullying at school and at the age of 13 won a scholarship to Sheffield School of Art. In 1923 he left for London with two art school friends. One of these was Frederick ROBERTS JOHNSON, with whom he had a close friendship for many years. Wragg's initial work in London was in magazine illustration.

In 1924 he and Johnson visited Polperro for the first time and fell in love with the place. Frederick Thomas Nettleinghame, a publisher and financier, had arrived in Polperro from Essex the year before. Subsequent to some shady dealings which saw him in the Bankruptcy Courts, Nettleinghame re-invented himself in Polperro as a tourist operator. He set up a business dealing in artefacts for the tourist market, and found the two young artists to be enthusiastic in assisting him in the production of burnt wood designs, or 'pokerwork'. Subsequently Wragg and Roberts Johnson rented a cottage in the village each summer. This continued throughout the 1930s, during which time they became integral members of the Polperro community.

The illustrations that Wragg was producing in the 1920s were for postcards that have come to be known as CORNISH LITANY POSTCARDS.  The distinguishing feature of this 'tourist art cards' is that they carry the following legend: 'From Ghoulies & Ghosties/And long-leggetty beasties/And things that go bump in the night/Good Lord deliver us!' Why this ditty is connected to Cornwall is unknown, and similar ditties are found in Devon and Scotland and other West Country destinations on boxes, cups and other artefacts. The illustrations are of beastly images, goblins and other endearing though outlandish figures, perhaps referencing some old Celtic horror stories, a bedtime prayer or moral tales for children. Other known illustrators of this postcard genre was one Stanley T CHAPLIN, about whom nothing is known, and the Polperro artist and historian Alice C BIZLEY (nee Butler). An article in the Postcard World Magazine, Nov/Dec 2011 explores the topic of the craft community in Polperro in the 1920s. 'The Cornish Litany is referred to as one of their first and best selling items. The publication boasted of the artwork of Arthur Wragg in their souvenir line of pokerwork and postcards.' 

During the 1930s Wragg became troubled by the struggles of working-class people in the aftermath of the First World War, followed by the Depression. In 1933 he produced a ground-breaking work, 'The Psalms for Modern Life'. His black-and-white illustrations for this publication made a powerful, uncompromising comment on the political and social issues of the day. It also raised his profile to the extent that his work began to be compared to that of William Blake, William Hogarth and Francisco de Goya.

Wragg wrote and illustrated 'Jesus Wept' in 1934. This was a hard-hitting publication, which he intended as a warning on a future which seemed without hope. He began to be regarded as a prophet. In 1936, he met the author Walter Greenwood while on holiday in Polperro. Greenwood was well known at the time, as he had completed his first novel, 'Love on the Dole' in 1933, to considerable acclaim. The two became good friends, as they had much in common, including their political views. Wragg illustrated a book of Greenwood's short stories, entitled 'The Cleft Stick'. 

Despite the sombre nature of some of his work, Wragg had a great sense of humour and created lightweight drawings, jacket covers for novels and much else. He and Johnson enjoyed a busy social life during winters spent in London. In 1938 Wragg was focussed on a project entitled 'Seven Words', relating to the Crucifixion. The black and white illustrations seemed to suggest influences such as Hieronymous Bosch and surrealism. Published in 1939, it did not receive a great deal of critical acclaim as by then attention was focussed on the impending global conflict of World War II.

Alarmed at the rise of Fascism, in 1935 Wragg helped form the Peace Pledge Union. Alongside Roberts Johnson, he became actively involved in the left-wing newspaper The Tribune, creating front cover illustrations for the first seventeen issues of the publication. When World War II broke out, Wragg applied to register as a conscientious objector. He became a prison visitor and art teacher at Wandsworth Gaol, and in 1941 began to teach at Beltane School, a progressive establishment in Wimbledon. From there he brought groups of students down to Polperro on sketching trips. When peace was declared in 1945 a celebratory party was held in the village. Both Wragg and Roberts Johnson produced visual depictions of the event.

After the War, Wragg moved into a flat in London's Old Brompton Road, which he shared with his partner Sigurd, and subsequently David. He remained in demand as a commercial artist, obtaining regular commissions from the Decca Record Company for their album covers. While he continued to produce satirical work reflecting the post-war political climate of fear and uncertainty, it is his hard-hitting black and white images from the 1930s for which he is best known.

He llustrated such books as Cranford (1947) and Moll Flanders (1948) and biblical subjects such as The Song of Songs (1952) and working for magazines such as Woman's Pictorial. (Long list in Peppin & Micklethwait.)

 

Mentioned in Whybrow's 1921-39 list of artists in and around St Ives.

Peter Wray is an innovative printmaker with a considerable international reputation as an artist-printmaker.  He is one of the UK's foremost exponents of collagraph/carborundum printing. In 2009, together with his partner and fellow artist Judy COLLINS, he moved from York to Penzance, re-locating 'Handprint Studio' to Trewidden Gardens. He has 35 years' experience as a teacher.

Wray is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.  He has exhibited widely throughout Britain and abroad, and his work is held in several prestigious private, public and corporate collections.

 

With Stanhope FORBES from about 1901-2. Listed in Platt as a New Zealand painter.

A member of the Industrial class, Newlyn, William Wright is also remembered as a skilled carpenter.

Sculptor, based near Truro, who specialised in architectural ceramics, murals and reliefs: 'because when using ceramics one can create a permanent work of art using applied colour as well as natural colour.'

 Peter Wright is a Redruth-based artist who rarely shows his work. According to Cornwall Today, his paintings range 'from the exquisitely beautiful to the dark and edgy'.

An oil painting on paper by this artist, entitled Reef Playtime, is in the art collection of the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

Wright trained in art at Maidstone College of Art and at the RA Schools, London. A member of the NSA, she is also a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Falmouth University, living nearby in a former chapel in Helston. In 2003 she was winner of the Hunting Art Prize and in 2009 she won the National Open Art Competition. Wright was awarded a two year residency with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2008. In 2013 she became joint winner of the prestigious Threadneedle Prize with 'The Guilty's Gaze on the Innocent'. She is a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy summer shows.

Wright is a tutor at Newlyn School of Art (2016).

Michelle Wright studied at Wimbledon School of Art. She started her career as a theatrical costumier and designer working in Edinburgh and at the National Theatre, London. She has lived in St Ives for thirty years and finds the town a constant source of inspiration. She says: 'Although I draw and paint I get the most satisfaction out of printmaking as it combines art with craft. There is something very exciting about working on a plate, putting it through a press then peeling back the paper to see what has been produced.'

She has exhibited at the Glasshouse Gallery.

David Wright was born in Birmingham. He lives and works in Hayle. In 2017 he was featured in the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year televised art competition. His work encompasses a wide range of media.

Pages