Stephen Beer has spent the majority of his life in the town of his birth, Saltash, where he presently lives with his wife, artist Jo Beer. Stephen began making experimental films as a teenager, influenced by Derek Jarman, Elliott Bristow and Kenneth Anger. Later he studied Graphic Design & Photography at Falmouth School of Art, then Photomedia at Plymouth College of Art. He has worked in Art and Media education. In 2013 he and Jo were part of the group, led by John Forster, which created 'The Saltash Ferryman', a public sculpture funded by the Heritage Lottery, to conserve the history of the ferry that crossed the Tamar at Saltash for over 900 years.
Stephen currently works in the area of painting and collage.
Jo Beer is a Truro based artist who has been making pots since the 1980s. She studied in Devon and Cornwall under Roger Cockram and Bill Marshall. Alongside her art practice, she assists artists with learning difficulties. Jo's stoneware vessels are strongly influenced by Neolithic pottery. Her individual pieces are made either by throwing or coiling. She uses oxides, river sand and quartz, with very little glaze, in order to achieve the required textural quality to her work.
Jo Beer's work has been shown at the Lander Gallery, Truro, the Burton Gallery in Bideford and the Camelford Gallery.
She became a member of Taking Space, a group of women artists, in 2017.
Beesley came to Cornwall in 1987 to study art at Falmouth College of Arts. After graduation he chose to remain, and works mainly in illustration, designing images for cards and book covers.
In 1998 he won the prestigious 'Best Watercolourist' Prize in the Artists in Cornwall competition.
Sophi Beharrell was born in Welwyn Garden City. Long-standing family connections with Cornwall and the memory of wonderful family holidays in the county prompted her move to Cornwall in the 1990s, to work as a ship's chandler. Subsequently she began painting professionally from the Waterman's Gallery on Custom House Quay in Falmouth, once owned by the Newlyn School artist, Henry Scott TUKE. Her landscapes and seascapes have been exhibited widely both in Cornwall and further afield.
Rosemary (aka Romi) was born in Wiltshire, but came to Cornwall in 1959, where she remained until her death. A multi-talented and thoroughly creative person, she was as much a musician (violinist) as a visual artist, the latter having been taken up after marriage to her late husband Michael. As a painter, she was largely self-taught, and greatly responsive to people and objects such as musical instruments and flowers, which found their way into her images.
She was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists (NSA) from the late 1960s, though resigning in disgust a couple of times. With the NSA she exhibited often in mixed shows. Her work was also shown at the Rainyday Gallery, Penzance.
Romi was both a speedy and a spontaneous artist, as described by Frank RUHRMUND, reviewing her colourful and exuberant work. She was quick to tell you that she would like to paint your portrait - and it would only take 5 minutes. Her instincts and opinions were positive and naturally 'sunny' in approach. Her friends were many in the artistic community and included Jeremy LE GRICE, Lyn LE GRICE, Rose HILTON, Jane AKEROYD, Daphne McCLURE and many others.
South African-born Bekker uses only discarded and unwanted materials, found or donated to him, which he gives a new life. He likes turning these 'waste objects' into something new, and also makes furniture and other functional art pieces.
He has exhibited extensively in Cornwall since his Open Studios exhibition of 2009, and often shows work in hotels and restaurants as well as exhibitions in galleries and festivals. In 2011 he has shown in various venues in Port Isaac and also at the Art House Gallery in Southampton, Hampshire.
Bell was born in Leeds and studied at the Leeds Art College (1947-52). In 1955, at the suggestion of Terry FROST, he and his wife arrived in St Ives (on a motorbike). From a rented cottage next door to Karl WESCHKE, they moved to another cottage later bought by Roger HILTON after they had left. While in St Ives, Bell shared a studio with Brian WALL and became a member of the Penwith Society in 1956.
The Italian government provided two government scholarship periods in 1959 whereby Bell was able to spend 3-4 months each time near Tivoli, after which he returned to Britain. Bell left St Ives in 1960. A series of teaching posts followed at Leeds, Bradford, Winchester, Hornsey and in the USA at Florida State, Tallahassee. His reputation as both an abstract artist and a brilliant colourist soared internationally.
A solo exhibition of Bell's work was held at the Tate St Ives in 2004, and the year before at the Millennium Gallery, St Ives. He returned to Cornwall during the late 1990s, and lived and worked near Penzance. His extensive biography and bibliography of exhibitions, and the publications about these, is best found on the Internet search engines.
Trevor Bell died in November 2017 after a short illness.
Born in the City of London, he studied at the Slade and spent one year in Paris (1883) under Gerome at the Ecole de Beaux Arts, where he exhibited two paintings in the Salon. His addresses for sending-in were London, and later Christchurch, Hampshire, and it is likely that he and his wife remained only briefly in St Ives.
He attended the General Meeting (Aug 1890) of the group of new members of the St Ives Arts Club (STIAC) and became an early member of the NEAC to exhibit 'on merit' in London. Tovey comments that his name does not appear in STIAC records at any time after the inaugural meeting. His illustrated books include Picturesque Brittany and Nuremburg, authored by his wife Nancy.
In 1919 Nancy presented 55 paintings by her husband to Christchurch Borough Council, but for reasons unknown (in 2005) only two paintings appear to have survived.
Born in Australia, he studied at the Melbourne Gallery School (under McCubbin) and also in Paris with Laurens. Bell worked in St Ives for a year in 1909, and then for several years in Chelsea, London. Strongly influenced by post-Impressionism, he became a war artist in WWI. Back in Australia in the 1920s, he taught as a leader of the Modern Movement, and became an influential critic.
Bell came from Canada to work at the Leach Pottery in 1930-31, and established the Malvern Pottery thereafter.
"Very early on a woman named Muriel Bell from Canada worked at St Ives about the time I first joined the pottery. She went on to set up a pottery. Then just after Muriel Bell came Charlotte EPTON who latter married Edward Bordon, the war artist. Neither of these women were there very long." (Ceramics Monthly Jan 1997, A Conversation with David Leach by Gary Hatcher)
A pupil of the FORBES SCHOOL 1906-10 and again in 1916. She attended the school before she was married, as Miss Sampson, and then returned to study later as Mrs Percy Bell. Her nickname was 'Damit', for which we can only guess the reason why!
A visitor to St Ives noted by Whybrow in the 1921-1939 list. This could presumably be the famed lady traveller.
Since 1996, Bell has lived and worked in Cornwall. In 2007 she was selected for the survey show, Art Cornwall Now, at the Tate St Ives, during which she was described as a 'poet-artist' with the ability 'to notice things in the interstices of the day-to-day.'
Vanessa Bell was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a prominent Victorian man of letters, and older sister to Virginia (who married Leonard Woolf). During their childhood summers, the Stephen family would decamp from London to St Ives and stay in Talland House, a place of many happy memories for both Vanessa and Virginia (To The Lighthouse was inspired by these holidays).
At the age of 17, Vanessa began drawing lessons and entered the Royal Academy Schools (1901). In 1907, after an affair with Roger Fry, she married Clive Bell (the art critic) who helped Roger Fry set up the first Post-Impressionist show in London (1910). She and Bell had two children, Julian and Quentin (Julian died in the Spanish Civil War), and she later had a daughter, Angelica, with the artist Duncan Grant (with whom she settled at Charleston in Sussex for the remainder of her life).
The Stephen sisters were at the centre of the Bloomsbury Group, and all these individuals remained lifelong friends and artistic/intellectual collaborators. Both Bell and Grant were deeply influenced by the post-Impressionists; they set up the Omega Workshops together for which Vanessa designed fabric prints, and painted furniture and trompes L'oile, and she also designed and illustrated dust-jackets for many of her sister's books. Her work was first noticed by The New Age in Nov 1912 (Vol. 12, No. 3, p 67), although much of her earlier work was lost in a bombing raid during the second world war.
Bell's decorative work at Charleston House and elsewhere is well documented, and the Hypatia Collection of women's writings contains a large selection of books and ephemera of the arts, crafts and writings of the Bloomsbury group. [Exeter University Special Collections, and Penzance, Cornwall]
Having worked and lived near the sea, Bell is associated with marine pieces, paintings and mixed media. He has exhibited on the Lizard.
Walter Lambert Bell was born in Sheffield. He studied part-time at the Sheffield School of Art, and exhibited with the Sheffield Society of Artists during the 1920s and 1930s. He could not make a living from his art and was recorded as a fried fish dealer from 1925 to 1932. He was married to Sarah Freedman (known as Sadie) in 1930 and in 1934 he became a ladies hairdresser. Around 1937 the couple moved to Stoney Middleton near Bakewell in Derbyshire, where he continued to work as a hairdresser, painting in his spare time.
On his retirement Bell and his wife retired to Cornwall, though it is not known where they settled. He produced paintings of Mevagissey, Polperro and Cadgwith. Their marriage broke down and Sadie returned to Sheffield. He stayed in the west country and moved to Tavistock, where he died in 1983.
H R Bell lives in Paul, near Newlyn. She is the great-granddaughter of Newlyn School painter Frank Gascoigne HEATH. Her wide-ranging travels have inspired her vibrant figurative work.
West Penwith subjects in auction lists; no further information is currently known.
Lived at Tywarnhayle, Burthallon Lane, St Ives, and enjoyed Scottish sketching holidays.
Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, Bellina is recorded in the 1891 Census as living at Mount Hawke, Truro, Cornwall with wife Nellie. No further information is currently available.
Born in London, he studied art at the Slade under Legros, and in Paris under Constant. He lived mostly in London, but worked in various parts of England, from Yorkshire to Sussex and Cornwall.
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1921-39 list of artists in and around St Ives.
Belohorsky was a Czech artist who arrived at St Ives as a refugee in WWII. Whybrow finds him, along with his family (Jana and Eva), introduced into the St Ives arts community at STIAC.
David Tovey has contributed further information: (2014)
Joza BelohorskyShow Day: 1945STISA: 1942-1946STISA Touring Shows: 1945. Belohorsky was a Czech artist, who came to St Ives as a refugee during World War II, where he was warmly welcomed by the artistic community. When I wrote Creating A Splash, I could find very little information about his time in St Ives and nothing about the rest of his life. However, in April 2011, I was contacted by Mark Pemberton, whose father had acquired a number of works off Belohorsky, whilst, in late 2013, one of his grand-daughters got in touch with me and told me a little about his difficult family background. Joza was actually born as Joseph Svasta in Austria. His date of birth is not known by his family. He married firstly Jozafina Knoblichova, with whom he had four children - the two youngest being Mirka (later known as Martha) in 1924 and Jaruska (later known as Sylvia) in 1930. The latter was born in Vince, France. However, in c.1933, it appears that Jozafina abandoned her family. Joza moved the children to Prague, where he remarried a Jewish hat-maker, Eva Furgison, with whom he had two further daughters, Ivana and Sonia. Joza was strongly anti-Nazi, as is reflected in several pieces of his art, and disowned his two eldest children, a son and a daughter, because of their Nazi sympathies. With a Jewish wife as well, it was necessary for him to leave Prague after the German occupation, and, whilst he and Eva went to Paris, he sent Martha and Sylvia to a school for Czech refugee children in the south of France. In 1939, he and Eva came to England on their own, but Czech soldiers managed to get Martha and Sylvia onto a cattle boat to Liverpool, where Joza linked up with them again in late 1939. However, whilst Sylvia lived with her father and Eva for a while, Mirka decided not to and both children had bitter memories of their father. Joza was primarily a portrait painter and his exhibits included a portrait of George Manning Sanders but he also worked in pastels and did etchings, which were considered original in treatment and unique in outlook. Mark Pemberton owned a self portrait done in 1938, which shows a thick-necked, bespectacled man, with a jutting jaw, whose hair has receded almost completely from the top of his head. It is not particularly flattering. However, there were also some attractive drawings of girls, possibly one or more of his daughters. These are in a distinctive style and demonstrate good draughtsmanship. His etchings include one of St Nicholas Chapel on The Island, St Ives, framed by rocks, and a most novel, fanciful depiction of a cromlech, where figures bearing the weight of the top stone are shown carved into the supporting stones. Possibly due to Belohorsky’s presence in the colony, Borlase Smart, in typical fashion, felt that art would be good therapy for the Czech soldiers stationed in St Ives and, in July 1943, he arranged for the soldiers to put on a display of art in STISA’s Gallery. This was opened by Leonard Fuller. Belohorsky featured on Show Day in 1945 and was represented in the 1945 touring show. However, there is no further reference to him. He appears to have given up his art and he and Eva became involved in a scarf-making business, which resulted in a tour of several American east-coast cities during 1945. This, however, eventually went into liquidation in 1949, when they were living in Leonards-by-the-Sea, Sussex. Joza was still alive in 1968, but his precise date of death is unknown.
The artist was born on the Isle of Wight and studied at Portsmouth College of Art & Design, and at Leeds Metropolitan University. After some commissioned work, contributing to radio and TV programming, she moved to Michigan, USA and exhibited her work there. Returning to the UK she turned to creating seascapes in extreme weather. Acknowledging the influence of James Abbot McNeil WHISTLER and John CONSTABLE, she paints from nature, based on open air sketching and the photographic results of the camera.
In St Ives, her work is shown at the Waterside Gallery.
The artist is known to have lived at various times in London, Walberswick (late 1880s) where he became a permanent resident, and Southwold. He exhibited three paintings at the Dowdeswell Exhibition of 1890, so had associated himself with Cornwall prior to that date.