When Marion and Terry WHYBROW first came to Cornwall in 1980 and settled in St Ives, Marion was a primary school teacher, with a degree in 19th century literature and its legacy, and a teaching certificate from the London Institute of Education. She had been teaching full time, producing the school magazine, and taking the extra responsibility of encouraging children to be creative writers. In Cornwall this translated into part-time and supply teaching, and undertaking articles for the St Ives Times & Echo on art exhibitions and various other (usually art related) events. Her husband Terry was and remains a full-time artist.
Marion was the organiser of 'Inspire' promoting exhibitions for painters, potters and sculptors, selecting artists, writing catalogues and arranging venues. Co-director with publisher Toni Carver (St Ives Times) and together with Colin ORCHARD, designer, she also organised several book fairs, writers' days, Open Studio events and arts-related Town Trails for St Ives. In 1990 she organised the Arts & Crafts Exhibition for six schools in St Ives to celebrate the centenary year of the St Ives Arts Club (STIAC).
As such a town 'servant' one could describe her as the original back-room girl for the artists, and out of these activities she took on the pioneering role of contemporary historian and documenter of the artists' colony of St Ives, a path which several others have followed up with in-depth studies of individual artists and major surveys of particular aspects of the creative colonies (such as marine painting, landscape painters, and defined periods).
Marion made her own contribution to the contemporary artists of West Cornwall, by publishing a series of small books about painters, potters and sculptors around her from 1984-1996 (listed below) which still stand as a useful record about artists, most of whom are still alive today, but about whom little personal information may be available, due to lack of literature such as biographies or critical reviews. These little books offered a portrait of the artist-craftsman at an earlier time in their career, usually in their private studio, with a personal statement.
But meantime, with a research grant from the University of Exeter, Marion produced her first major book 1883-1993 Portrait of an Art Colony, to coincide with the opening of the Tate Gallery, St Ives (1993), published by the Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk. The book was launched at the Tate St Ives, and remains a treasured archive of detail about art and artists in St Ives, and West Cornwall. From this pioneering work, much else has been forthcoming from other researchers and historians.
Marion's contribution to the history of art and artists in Cornwall is immense, as will be seen from her bibliography. Her social contributions to the organisations that back up and support 'the creative industries' as arts and crafts seem to be called today, are equally great, i.e. STIAC, Tate Gallery St Ives, Leach Pottery, and archives such as the St Ives Archive Trust and the West Cornwall Art Archive. She was an active member of the Hypatia Trust, and contributed a large number of photographs and mementos to the West Cornwall Art Archive project of the Trust.
She died on 19 July, 2015, aged 83, leaving her artist husband Terry, two daughters, and four grandchildren and many friends in the literary and visual arts worldwide.
Teresa Wicksteed was born in Sussex and educated in London. From the University of Leeds she attained a BA (Hons) in English, followed by an MA. Subsequently she obtained a PGCE in London, where she had a wide-ranging teaching career. She moved to the Rame peninsula in south-east Cornwall in the early 1990s. In 2002 she graduated from Falmouth College of Arts with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. A fellow student at Falmouth was Moreen MOSS, who became a close friend.
Teresa works from a studio overlooking the sea. Her work is concerned with 'the immaterial, rather than the material world'. She says: 'The daily changes of light on the water feed my inner vision. I try to express in paint the transformative energy of my personal spiritual journey'. She describes her painting as 'a process of concealment and revelation'.
She has exhibited widely in both group and solo shows in Devon, Cornwall and London. Many of her works have found homes in therapeutic locations such as an osteopathy practice, an acupuncture practice, a yoga teaching room and two hospices.
Born in Exeter, the son of the artist William WIDGERY, Frederick studied at Exeter School of Art, at Antwerp under Verlat and at the Bushey School of Art under Herkomer. In 1890 he exhibited at the RCPS at Falmouth.
He became Chairman of Exeter Public Art Gallery and a Magistrate of the City. His landscapes of south-west England featured especially Dartmoor, and the cliffs and moors of Devon and Cornwall.
Livvy is autistic. She produces wonderfully lively paintings using bird and animal designs. She exhibits her work at Spindrift Gallery in Portscatho.
American (b New York) painter working from Carrack Dhu, St Ives, with his wife, Grace, and his daughter, May, also working artists.
A full page coloured plate of Man in a White Coat (detail) by this artist in 1994, is included in the Public Foundation Catalogue for Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly (p39). It a painting forming part of the University College Falmouth Art Collection in which he has other works.
She and her husband spent much of the 1920s and 1930s abroad. In 1939 they were living in Exeter but in 1946 she was working as a physiotherapist in Calstock, east Cornwall. She exhibited at the 1949 'Foresters Hall' exhibition in Polperro, showing a number of portraits which were painted in Trinidad, and also paintings of seagulls.
Alongside her involvement with Polperro artists, she became a member of STISA, with whom she exhibited in 1950-1951. She then moved to Sussex but after her husband's death she moved back to Devon, and was living in Budleigh Salterton at the time of her death.
Finnish born artist from Helsingfors, Helsinki, who followed her fellow student friend Helene SCHJERFBECK to the St Ives Colony in 1887-1889. Previously they had both attended the Finska Konstreningen, and were amongst the first group of Finnish women painters to study in France.
She attended the Academie Julian in Paris and studied under Robert-Fleury. She and Helene had also painted in Pont Aven, France (1883-4). In St Ives Maria painted a study of youth and old age, Out in the World (1887). This was considered a major landmark in her career, presaging more symbolic work and regarded as her most important work. She is primarily known for portraiture, and Swanson [in] Gaze comments that 'Her portraits of the leading members of Finnish society, viewed as cultural documents of the 1890s and early 20th century, were often commissioned by academic institutions.' Her name is sometimes mis-spelled Wilk. (Wiik, pronounced Veek).
Sculptor based near Truro, who worked in bronze, resin-bronze, ciment-fondu and plaster, mainly working direct from life (after a few preliminary drawings). 'My main subject is the female form and the human head (Rodin and Epstein are my main influences) but my taste in sculpture is very wide. My only ambition is for "quality" in my work.'
Wiles's work has been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery in Penzance.
Anne Beable Wilkening is a painter based at Krowji Studios in Redruth.
Annabel Wilkes graduated from Brighton University in 1994. A printmaker based in Newmill, near Penzance, her work is focussed on the collagraph method. More recently she has begun to experiment with cyanotype printing.
She is a tutor at the Porthmeor Print Workshop in St Ives, where she runs regular collagraph workshops. She is also a Learning Facilitator at Tate St Ives.
Annabel Wilkes' work has been exhibited widely in Cornwall and beyond.
He studied consecutively at Brussels, then both Julian's and Colarossi's in Paris. From 1919 to 1925, his address was in Penzance, and he exhibited at NAG, with at least one sale in the Summer Exhibition of 1921.
'I model in wax "fingertip" made - instant, intuitive. I enjoy the small scale because to some extent you can appear to defy gravity - the sheer weight of larger bronze forms would make this very difficult to suggest. They are not maquettes for larger projects, they are complete worlds in themselves.'
A painting attributed to this artist is in the collection held by Redruth Town Museum. It is entitled Redruth Grammar School with Carn Brea in the Background (oil on board).
Born in Birmingham, she lived in Handsworth and studied at the Birmingham Art School, then in Paris. She was a member of the Birmingham Art Circle. Though in general ill-health for most of her working life, she exhibited until her death in 1943.
Born in Cambridge, the artist was educated at Berkhamsted, and studied art at Portsmouth and Southsea Schools of Art. He then attended Julius OLSSON's school in St Ives. Here he claimed to have learned virtually all that he knew about art.
In 1919 with two companions from St Ives, Reginald Guy KORTRIGHT and Hugh Percy HEARD, he went to Paris; together they set up a studio and studied figure painting from the nude. In 1923, on behalf of the London Midland and Scottish Railway, he wrote to a number of West Cornwall artists offering a commission to produce tourist poster designs. Most accepted the offer, and the groundbreaking series was created in 1924, which aroused great public interest. He is the author of St Ives: A Brush with Life (Seeley Service, 1969), his autobiography. Later he became President of the RI.
Maureen Wilkinson's dream-like paintings, drawings and collages, often partnered by poems, explore the relationship between the present moment, myth and memory.
Aimee Willcock works from a studio in Helston. She grew up in Nottinghamshire and moved to Cornwall after graduating with a BA in Fine Art from Loughborough University School of Art & Design.
Aimee Willcox is from Nottinghamshire. After graduating with a BA in Fine Art from Loughborough University School of Art & Design, she moved to Cornwall.