Florence Canning is believed to have been born in Wiltshire. She exhibited in Devonport in 1885, and in Plymouth in 1895. In 1911 she joined her friend Bertha COCKERHAM who had been visiting St Ives for some years, and who had settled there from 1909. The two had previously worked together teaching painting in Yelverton, Devon, but Canning had retired from art due to extensive eye trouble. According to the 1911 Census, she and Bertha were living at Barnoon, St Ives.
Together they bought 'Ocean Wave Studio' in 1919, suggested by Tovey as probably a later Borlase Smart studio (Tovey 2009, photo of interior, p130).
Canning moved to Cornwall c1997, and settled in Hayle, while working from a studio in St Ives (2001). He was born in Oxfordshire and worked there as a full-time landscape artist before painting in the Welsh hills.
Fiona Cant works from a studio in Mount Hawke near Truro. In 2023 she joined Prime Women Artists, a supportive and creative network for women artists of all disciplines in Cornwall.
Capper has been producing wood turned art since 1998 and has exhibited widely, both locally and in national competitions, where he has successfully achieved prizes.
Sophie Capron was born in Northampton but the family moved to Cornwall when she was very young. After travels in Australia, she became a student at Winchester School of Art. During this time she spent three months in Japan. Subsequently she visited Central and Latin America. Returning to Cornwall in 2010, Capron settled down to teach at at the Roseland Academy, and to pursue her artistic career by taking studio space at the Old Bakery Studios in Truro.
Her work explores textures through multimedia. She is intrigued by the way that surfaces change and decay over time, concealing and revealing memories and stories. Capron's work has been shown in Europe, Japan and the USA. In 2017 she participated in the International Biennale in France.
Born in Wimbledon, Surrey, Michael became interested in pottery while he was a child, but it was whilst at Oxford (where he was reading Greats) that he announced to his surprised contemporaries his intention of becoming a country potter. He was taught to throw by William Fishley HOLLAND at Braunton in North Devon where he spent his holidays and visited Lake's Pottery in Truro, then came to the Leach Pottery as its first student (1923-26). He shared an interest in slipware with Bernard LEACH, and was greatly influenced by the pots of HAMADA. He also worked with Leach on the first craft exhibition of their pottery at the Newlyn Art Gallery (Christmas 1924).
After 3 years he left to re-found the century-old but derelict pottery at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. He experimented in industrial design at Stoke, and he founded and later enlarged the Wenford Bridge Pottery near Bodmin in Cornwall (1939), producing earthenware and stoneware. He worked in Ghana in West Africa from 1942 to 1948 as an instructor, and from 1951 to 1965 he established and ran a pottery and training centre at Abuja. He also traveled extensively, touring America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand making pots, demonstrating, writing and teaching. On his return to Wenford he wrote his autobiographical Pioneer Potter about his world travels, published in 1969.
The son of Michael Cardew and raised at Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, Seth studied painting at Chelsea School of Art (1952-54) and sculpture at Camberwell (1957-59) before returning to his pottery roots. After the death of his father (who had been the first pupil of Bernard LEACH and inspired by Hamada) he took over the family pottery.
Greatly influenced by his father with regard to the shape of his pots, Sethh decorates with brushwork and scraffito, using his wood-fired kiln to bring to life the interesting and sometimes unexpected glaze effects from reduction firing. Seth feels that forms must be lively, that 'shape is 99% of the pot and the pot should sing'. He leads workshops nationally and abroad.
Paul Cardew has a studio at Rame Barton in east Cornwall. He is a great-nephew of the renowned ceramicist Michael CARDEW. Paul obtained a BA (Hons) from Loughborough Art College followed by a teaching diploma from Leicester University, then went on to lecture at Exeter Art College. Subsequently he owned three potteries employing 300 people. He is famous for his collection of limited edition teapots, which are sold all over the world. He has been a designer for Portmeirion, Royal Doulton and the Tea Council, and designed and manufactured the NatWest pigs. He was also associated for six years with the Walt Disney Company. In 1999 his business expanded to include the USA and Canada.
Carey was born in Scotland, and is both an artist and a musician. He studied Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art for 4 years until 1981, and then decided to re-settle in Cornwall the following year. His love of landscape painting, first discovered in Scotland, has continued, fitting in well with the plein air tradition of Cornish painters. A good look at his excellent website reveals a wide range of coastal and in-land subjects, and the expansion of his pallette to the warmer climes of France and Spain where he also exhibits his work.
His home studio is in Falmouth, which allows him to paint viewing the sea.
Cargeeg became a keen scholar of Cornish history and language, being among those who actively tried to revive its use before WWII. Using only hand-tools and skills practised over many years in his small workshop at Trevean, Mellanear Road, Hayle (and later at the Old Forge, Lelant), he created a wide range of beautiful wares in copper, always with a strong Cornish style. The Celtic designs and intricately formed lacework found on his pieces were taken from ancient designs found on some of the very earliest Cornish monumental stonework.
He was also a watercolour artist, painting the Cornish landscape, but much of his painting is presently untraced. There are some of his copperware items at Lanhydrock House in Bodmin and the Guildhall in London as well as in many private collections.
In 1934, he became a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd GK, much to his pleasure and pride, and took the Bardic name of 'Tan Dyvarow', which translates from the Cornish as 'Undying Fire'. During WWII, he worked in the Imperial Chemical Industries plant at Hayle, having moved from Trevean with his wife Winifred (nee Hoskin) to a bungalow near Loggans Mill. His contribution and research into the work of the Gorsedd can be seen not only in its pre-War history but also in the unique copper regalia and the horn still regularly used on Bardic ceremonial occasions. He died in 1981, a few years after his wife.
[Information provided by Peter Browning to Penlee House]
Janet Carlton was born in Nottinghamshire and moved to Cornwall in 2015. She studied Art & Design, Fine Art and Interior Design in London, and obtained an MA from Derby University.
The artist, a clergyman from Truro, was awarded a First Bronze Medal in the Annual Exhibition of the RCPS for Smuggler's Cave (Amateur Watercolour section). No further information is available at present.
Nickie Carlyon works from Trewidden Garden Studios at Buryas Bridge near Penzance. Her work, which crosses between figurative and landscape, is influenced by social history and her interpretation of the given subject.
A craftworker who exhibited at NAG 1937 in an Unspecified category.
Elisabeth Carolan was born and educated in Germany but settled in the UK after studying English. She began painting in 1999. She has exhibited at the Society of Women Artists (SWA) at the Mall Galleries and is based in Surrey. She has painted the landscapes and seascapes of Cornwall extensively during a very successful career.
One of five craftspeople exhibiting embroidery at NAG in July-September 1928.
Born in British Columbia of English parents, the artist studied in San Francisco, Westminster School of Art in London, Concarneau, Atelier Colarossi in Paris, at St Ives under Julius OLSSON, and at the Herkomer School in Bushey. The final 18 months of her sojourn in Britain (1899-1904) were spent in a sanatarium due to the decline in her health which began before her arrival in St Ives.
Olsson was not sympathetic to her need to avoid wind and glare on the beach, but in Algernon Mayow TALMAGE she found a mentor who understood the urges she demonstrated toward shade and forests: she painted in Tregenna Woods, a turning point in her artistic history. Anecdotal information about her 'guardianship' over another artist, Harold Milford NORSWORTHY, looking after him for his anxious mother and including him in cartoon sketches that Tovey (2009) reprints in his chapter on 'Student Life in the Colony' (p259), makes for amusing reading.
Her special friend in St Ives was Hilda FEARON. Virtually nothing remains of her British work except for sketchbooks, and she began to write about the forest landscape and fishing villages of the Canadian West after illness curtailed her painting.
Born in Lincoln, Carr was an artist of limited ability (according to Tovey) but likeable personality, and his family lived initially at 22 Bay View Terrace in Penzance in 1891. They remained in Penzance until at least 1896, Carr participating in both the Opening Exhibition at NAG (with Landscape), and in 1896 with Breezy Day. The latter painting was sent to London for its purchaser, and in that year the artist's sending-in address was in St Ives, as it had been since 1893 when they had taken up residence at Albany Terrace there.
By 1901 Sydney and his wife Mary Louisa (nee Ridley) and their daughters had moved to Halsetown nearby. They moved back into St Ives in 1902 when they took up residence at Arkleby, Talland Road. Meantime Carr kept a studio, the Blue Bell Studio, until about 1911, and turned to a variety of creative activities including bookplates, photography, silhouettes, and generally exhibiting 'a zany character' in his work.
Tovey (2009) comments that Carr was one of the artists who sported a particularly 'comic eye' over the artistic community of St Ives, and for that reason becoming an especially revealing teller of the everyday lives of the artists through caricature and humour. After the Whitechapel Exhibition in 1902, Carr's name does not appear in listings. Tovey also reveals that Carr gave up the studio in 1911-12, reportedly going abroad. However he moved to Teignmouth in 1913, where he later died.
[Updated entry from Hardie 2009]
A correspondent in 2019 has reported that she came across a snippet on Carr from 1891, when he was described as showing 'a certain vigour ... marred by evident carelessness' and was presumed to have depicted Penzance sands (already largely vanished) 'as they ought to be' ['Art Exhibition at Penzance', Cornish Telegraph, 24.9.1891 p.8 col.1].
The third daughter of Sydney CARR, born in St Ives, Cornwall, Irene grew up in the creative colony of St Ives artists and craftsmen, showing some artistic talent herself. In 1908 she exhibited miniature portraits on Show Day, and Tovey (2009) displays one of her small works: a portrait miniature of the artist Mabel Maud DOUGLAS (who painted in a similar style).
Irene Carr married Francis Edward Wintle in 1912 (formerly a Borough Surveyor, then a Prison Governor in Liverpool and subsequently on the Isle of Wight). Many of the artists were guests at the wedding, presenting paintings to the couple. The wedding service itself was conducted by the Rev Bernard Walke, the husband of artist Annie WALKE (sister of Hilda FEARON). It was the social event of the year, and a grand party was held at the Porthminster Hotel for at least a hundred and twenty friends.
Andrea Carr is an artist, fashion and theatre designer who lives and works in St Ives and London. She obtained a BA (Hons) in Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University, followed by an MA at the Slade. In 2008 she set up an ethical fashion label, '21 Things I Love'.
She has created limited edition prints of the exotic birds at Paradise Park, Hayle.
Born in Carlisle, Cumbria, Wood notes that Carrick was a member of the Hogarth Club, where there was particular sympathy for Pre-Raphaelite ideas. Bednar viewed a framed picture of Newlyn harbour by the artist, which was stated to have been signed, inscribed and dated 1883 on the reverse when it was sold unframed at auction (Victorian Pictures, Phillips, New Bond Street, London, 3 June 1997, Lot 116). He travelled to France, Switzerland and Spain, and produced small, detailed studies and coastal scenes. He died in London, age 63, on 22 September, 1896 (GRO).
Carrick was a student at the Slade School of Art, whose summer class studies in St Ives in 1901 brought not only intensive work with landscape and marine painting but also romance and love. She had not in fact been able to study art until she was 25 years old because family responsibilities towards numerous younger siblings had kept her at home. In Cornwall she shared lodgings at The Cabin on Westcott's Quay with Hilda FEARON, Muriel COLDWELL, and Irma RICHTER, all of whom were also Slade students.
In St Ives she met the Australian artist, Emanuel Phillips FOX and they married in 1905, settling in Paris thereafter, before returning to Australia where their joint artistic careers took flight. Unfortunately she was widowed in 1915 and Ethel returned to Europe, giving an address in London from 1918.
Sculptor who studied at at Goldsmiths and Slade: 'The ideas I always return to are basicallly organic and to do with the world of nature. They are related to a primitive human need to explain my relationship with the environment...I am interested in horizons, seeing them not only as physically defining the land, sea mass and the sky, but also having a symbolic quality - the idea of what is beyond the horizon, an infinity - something outside our experience.'
In Cornwall he was Head of sculpture and fine art and vice-Principal of the Falmouth School of Art and Design (1976-91). His work was shown at the Penwith Gallery, St Ives, and at the Falmouth Art Gallery.
Janette Carter is a painter who has moved to Cornwall from Totnes.
Jim Carter was born in Worcestershire and studied at Falmouth University, obtaining an MA with distinction in Art & Environment in 2013. A member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, his work has appeared in 'About Place Journal','Unpsychology' and 'Earthlines' magazine. He says: 'I like to tell animal stories through words and sculpture. More often than not, they are about English wildlife and a sense of its power and vulnerability in relation to humankind.'