Katrina Slack was born in Exeter. She studied Sociology in London, subsequently gaining a post-graduate qualification in Photographic Journalism. While working as a photographer and a teacher, she became involved in the music industry, playing in a band, writing and touring.
In 2001 Katrina moved to west Cornwall, attending a variety of classes at Penwith College and St Ives School of Painting. She employs a wide range of media to express her concern for environmental issues. The art of Kurt JACKSON has been an influence on her work. Recently she received a commission from World Animal Protection to make a series of sculptures out of 'ghost fishing' gear, for display around the UK to promote their 'Sea Change' campaign. Locally, her work has been shown at Blue Mist Gallery in St Ives.
Linda Slade was born in London and grew up in south Wales. After having an artwork accepted by the Royal West of England Academy, she obtained art tuition and settled in Cornwall in 2012. She works from a studio in her house overlooking Mounts Bay. Her work has been widely exhibited in Cornwall.
Linda is a regular exhibitor at STISA open shows.
Jessica Slater was born in Penzance. in 2008 she obtained a BA from Cardiff University. She works from a studio in west Penwith. In 2012 her work was shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition. Her abstract paintings have been exhibited in Cornwall, Bristol and Bath.
Richard Slater was born in Tottenham and became a student at Hornsey College of Art. He taught for thirty years, retiring in 1980 to take up painting full time. He exhibited widely in Devon and Cornwall and further afield, and received many awards and prizes. His work was commissioned by companies in the UK and USA.
Born in the W Midlands, Steve was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School. He left at 16 with eight O-Levels including art. At the age of 17, he had two terms of painting tuition with John MILLER. Self-educated from that time, he was employed by the civil service, then as a railway clerk. At 25 Steve became self-employed, beginning his painting career in earnest. He began selling his work in St. Ives in 1979 with Keith English. His paintings became more widely known in Cornwall and beyond. In 2009 his work was included in National UK Art A-Level syllabus, for students to study with regard to use of light.
Steve enjoys working alone, but he also paints collaboratively with Vincent RYMER. He is a regular exhibitor at Tregony Gallery on the Roseland peninsula.
The Penlee collection, Penzance, includes work from the early 1800s by such potters as 'Slooman of Penzance'.
Gary Trevenen Small was born in Cornwall. His varied career has included a spell as a mining engineer, a move to London to pursue life as a musician, and subsequently working as a chef.
In 1996 he returned to Cornwall with his wife and two children and obtained a Certificate of Education at Cornwall College. At the age of 60 he developed his artistic skills by achieving a BA (Hons).
His raku method of glazing and firing pots draws on his Romany background and Cornish roots in the tin mining industry. He conducts workshops from his west Cornwall studio.
It is believed that this artist had a studio in Looe in the late 1930s. He produced etchings which recorded local scenes in Cornwall and Devon.
Born at Kingsbridge, Devon, his studies were with F J Snell (1896), then at Plymouth College of Art (1897), Royal College of Art (1899) and under Julius OLSSON in St Ives (1913). The artist returned to St Ives after serving in the army in WWI and his drawings of the Western Front were purchased by the Imperial War Museum. He married Irene Godson in 1917, settled in St Ives (1919), and worked from The Cabin, 1 Porthmeor Studios and the Ocean Wave Studio (1929). In 1935 he was one of the St Ives group commissioned to do a poster, based on an aerial view, of St Ives for tourism purposes. He also designed another for the Southern Railway, and many others.
Though now he is mainly regarded as a coastal artist, his industrial and architectural drawings after WWI are among his most accomplished work (Wormleighton). The couple moved to Salcombe, Devon, in 1926, but returned to St Ives the following year. In 1929 he published a book on the technique of painting seascapes. In 1934-36, Peter LANYON was his pupil.
Works displayed at Newlyn included two studies of St Ives, The Steel Works, Lincoln; The Nitrate Works, Plymouth; The Old 'Implacable' in Dry Dock (1929) and Land's End (1937). During WWII he designed propaganda posters for the Royal Navy.
In the RCM, Truro are two of his coastal landscapes, Morning Light, St Ives (1922), and Cornish Cliffs, Zennor (1923).
Borlase Smart was instrumental in his final year of life in securing a permanent home for the St Ives Society of Arts in the Mariner's Church, St Ives. In 1949, a group of St Ives' artists banded together to become members of the Penwith Society, as a tribute to him. These included Herbert Read, Barbara HEPWORTH, Peter LANYON, Shearer ARMSTRONG, G R DOWNING, Bernard LEACH, Denis MITCHELL, Ben NICHOLSON, Misome PEILE, and Philip KEALEY. In that final year, his portrait was painted by the sculptor Allan G WYON.
In West Cornwall today, as administered by the Tate Galleries, are the artists' studios in both St Ives and Newlyn, carrying the joint name of the Borlase Smart-John WELLS Trust. These have been renovated to a high standard, and are made available to artists upon application.
Diggy Smerdon is an illustrator who has her studio in a disused fish factory in Cornwall. Her line drawn figures are creations of her dreams and subconscious.
Alex Smirnoff was born in London. He studied graphics at West sussex College of Design and then worked as an illustrator in London.
He moved to St Just in Penwith in 1987, after making a number of trips to visit previously. The ancient sites and stones and the folklore attached to them intrigues him, and there are various ways in which his self-expression feeds from them. He makes sculpture, he paints and he creates installations, as well as making music.
His work has been shown at Rainyday Gallery, Penzance.
Work by this artist is included in the art collection of University College Falmouth (UCF).
An amateur artist who was possibly an illegitimate daughter of the Prince Regent and lived at Ince Castle, near Saltash, Cornwall. Her only significant known work is at the Whitworth.
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1883-1900 list of artists in and around St Ives.
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1911-20 list of artists in and around St Ives.
Work by this artist is included in the art collection of University College Falmouth (UCF).
Recorded as a participant in the St Ives Show Day of 1923. Regularly exhibiting with STISA, she does not appear to have done so after 1932 when her address is given as Hampstead Garden City. She mainly produced coloured woodcuts, favouring castles, bridges and old houses.
Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951) was an artist, illustrator and writer. Her chief claim to fame is designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite. Smith was born in England to American parents, and grew up in Jamaica. She toured with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in the late 1890s, where she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and met Waite.
She also did a great deal of illustration work for William Butler Yeats and his brother Jack, but apart from this deck, her art found little commercial success. In addition to the tarot deck, Smith wrote and illustrated several books about Jamaican folklore, including Annancy Stories (1902) which were about Jamaican versions of tales involving the traditional African folk figure Anansi the Spider. As she approached the age of forty, Pamela received a small inheritance, and moved to the English coast to an artists' colony at the Lizard, Cornwall. Eventually, suffering from both physical problems and shrinking financial means, Pamela relocated to Bude, Cornwall, during WWII. Unfortunately, the original art work for her tarot deck has disappeared, and the original printing plates were destroyed during the bombing of London in the war.
Frances Tysoe Smith was a fine maritime painter whose work has been greatly underrated.
In 1914 this artist member of the Arts Club signed in the painter Thomas Hodgson LIDDELL as a visitor. The following year she exhibited at the Show Day.
At the 1923 St Ives Show Day, and in 1924 she exhibited from her own studio, showing a large landscape, 'marsh lands with water in the foreground, and a flock of sheep beyond', alongside two other paintings. She shared the Blue Studio with her sister Miss S FREEMAN.
Born at Warnbrook, Dorset, the son of a clergyman, Hely Smith studied at the Lincoln School of Art and at the Antwerp Academy. He worked abroad before being based in Looe for much of the 1890s, and, as he specialised in marine subjects, he may have studied under, or become friendly with, OLSSON at this time (Tovey). By 1899 he had moved to London.
A correspondent (2021) who is a great-great nephew to the artist, has written to offer additional information about him, provided by the correspondent's mother, who knew Hely Smith well. The correspondent is the proud owner of around 100 of the artist's paintings.
Apparently Hely Smith was friends with an Austro-Hungarian portrait painter, Philip de Laszlo, with whom he went on painting expeditions. Smith was also acquainted with Vincent van Gogh. A letter written by Hely Smith in 1941 suggests he was very active and lucid until shortly before his death.