George Ficklin was born in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, Hampshire. He is believed to have married his wife, Amelia, during the 1860s and the couple lived in Lewisham (1871) and in Surrey (1891). He was employed as an HM customs officer during the 1880s and 1890s.
Kelly's Directory of 1893 lists this artist as living at Penlee Villa, Penlee View Terrace, Penzance. Penlee House includes a painting of Ficklin's, entitled Contentment, dated 1895.
Wood identifies him as living in Pimlico, London at earlier dates (1865-1885), but also finds that he exhibited seven paintings of landscape subjects from Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall at Smith Street within that period. This may simply indicate that he had also been in Cornwall from time to time in years prior to residence from the mid-1880s.
From 1885 he is also recorded (J&G) with an address in Falmouth. He exhibited at both the RBA and RI. Ficklin died in Penzance.
Gill Fickling divides her time between Cornwall and Andalucia. She has a BA in Film & Photographic Arts from Westminster University, and has participated in the Defining Practice course at Newlyn School of Art. Having spent most of her professional life as a human-rights, documentary film-maker, Gill now focusses full-time on her art practice.
The son of a yeoman farmer, Harry Fidler was born at Teffont Magna, Tisbury in Wiltshire. He was the ninth of ten children of William Fidler (1807-1877) and his wife Jane nee Humby (1814-1882) who married at Dinton St Mary Church, Wiltshire, in 1839.
The artist's early years were spent in farming, an upbringing which had a marked influence on the subjects he would later paint. Three of his siblings - Fanny, Lucy and Gideon - also displayed artistic talents, yet Fidler was well into his thirties before attending Herkomer's School at Bushey in 1891 for a couple of years.
He returned to Bushey in 1898 where he met and married another student, Laura Clunas, settling initially in Salisbury (possibly studying further at the Salisbury Art College), with Harry leasing an old Methodist Chapel in Teffont Magna, Wiltshire as his studio. The Fidlers visited St Ives on a number of occasions, first being signed-in as guests in the St Ives Art Club in 1907.
They appear to have joined the Arts Club for a period, but eventually settled at Andover, which remained their permanent home. A figure, rustic and domestic painter, the artist used oil on canvas, with at least eight of his RA exhibits being six foot canvases. Unfortunately the canvases were of an often inferior type (burlap or potato sacking) with little or no ground, which has meant that many of his pictures have often needed restoration. His earlier work was signed with the monograms 'Fid' or 'Hfid'.
A recent correspondent, and family member writes (2012) 'I can confirm that there is a strong connection between Harry and St Ives - I once owned a painting called Waiting for Herring, St Ives and have seen numerous paintings of similar beach and fishing scenes.'
Jenny Field moved to Cornwall from Hampshire in 2015. She studied Drawing and Art History at Winchester School of Art, and attends regular life drawing classes at the St Ives School of Painting.
Her work has been shown in Cornwall, Hampshire and London.
Rob Fierek has been an established potter in the Tamar Valley for over two decades and works from a studio in Albaston near Gunnislake. He makes a wide range of functional and decorative stoneware. He is currently experimenting with white earthenware.
His wife, Rosie FIEREK, is also a potter.
Rosie Fierek and her husband Rob FIEREK work from a studio in Albaston near Gunnislake. Her designs are wide-ranging, including individually hung pictures of birds and landscapes, medals and commemorative ware, fireplace surrounds plaques, and motifs for her husband's thrown ware.
Rosie is also an experienced leader of workshops and community-based projects.
During his 40 years in Lostwithiel, Peter Figg produced a body of paintings representing a unique vision of his local area, including Looe, Launceston, St Austell and Fowey, and surrounding valleys. His signature compositions were achieved through wonderfully observed sketches executed in watercolour and print.
He was a lecturer in print and photography for 16 years at West Surrey College of Art, and he shared his skills by teaching painting and calligraphy at St Austell Adult Education Centre during the early 2000s.
Derek Finch lives in Totnes, Devon where he works full-time as the Projects Manager of a housing association for the disabled. His first foundation course was in Art Therapy at Hertfordshire College of Art and Design (1987-8), followed by Visual Studies at Oxford Polytechnic. His degree was in Art and Social Context at Dartington College of Arts in 1993.
As an artist, he works with old, redundant antiquarian books and re-invents and recycles them, to create a new form: "giving them a new creative life. When I make an 'art book' or a 'Speaking Volume' (his commercial name for his work), I let all the aspects of that book influence me: the age, cover title, physical texture, sze and structure as well as the book's literary content, to create another layer of meaning. Each book is re-assembled, sculpted, painted and transformed to unfold a new story."
He visits Cornwall frequently both as a holiday visitor, a working artist and an exhibitor. He has exhibited in bookshops, galleries and museums primarily in the south west of Britain, but also in Switzerland, Germany and Oxford. In Cornwall this includes NAG (1998), Beside the Wave, Falmouth (1999), The Book Gallery, St Ives (1999), The Island Gallery, St Ives (2005) and the Penzance Arts Club (2006). In 2010 he exhibited his work at the Penzance Literary Festival at Trevelyan House, as organised by the HYPATIA TRUST.
Dana Finch works from Trewidden Garden Studios at Buryas Bridge, near Penzance. Her subjects include the landscape of Spain.
She lived in St Ives with her brother, Colonel James Marshall Findlay (d1945) and his wife, Cecile, stalwarts of Arts Club and community activities in the town.
Although she exhibited in a number of tours with STISA, by 1938 she had moved to Glasgow; she did, however, retain her membership of the Society.
Eric Finlay was a student at the Slade School of Art from 1953 to 1957. Subsequently he studied for a year at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. On his return he taught initially in the Graphics department at the Slade, and then in the Lithographic department of Chelsea School of Art, from 1959 to 1981.
He was awarded the Boise Scholarship.
Finlay worked in Porthleven during the period of the Summer Painting School administered by Michael CANNEY, and the Porthleven Group's exhibition at the Porthleven Gallery, an old china-clay warehouse on the quayside (c1965-6).
His exhibiting history began in the 1950s, continuing until the early 1990s. His work was shown not only in Cornwall and London, but further afield in Paris and Tokyo. His work is held in several public and private collections.
In July 2018 Eric Finlay's daughter held an exhibition of nine of his paintings from the Sixties, at Stanley Halls in South Norwood, London SE25.
One of the final gestures that the ever-generous Michael Finn made was to present to the then nascent West Cornwall Art Archive (when it was housed in the back-garden library of the Hypatia Trust at Newmill, Penzance) was to ensure that we had a copy of his exhibition programmes and publications. And when he died, through the good offices of Elizabeth KNOWLES who had worked closely with him in later years, he also presented his entire book collection to the project, one of our valued legacies.
Finn had served as Principal of two British art schools in his distinguished career, the first being Falmouth School of Art, and then the Bath School of Art at Corsham. Michael and his wife Cely moved to St Just in Penwith soon after retirement from the latter and took up his mixed media constructions and paintings full-time thereafter. John Halkes in his 1994 article in the Church Times, reveals that he began to make sculptures when his son Richard asked him to make a crucifix for his room, after which a series of sculptures based on the form followed, some of which were part copper and cast in bronze, also mixed with pieces of rough-hewn wood.
Michael was a life-long Roman Catholic and a devoted family man. He and Cely had three children, two daughters and one son, the latter becoming a priest. The family asked the Rev John HALKES, a former and highly-regarded Director of the Newlyn Orion Art Gallery, to take over and dispose of his remaining art works. These were exhibited in a major and well attended exhibition at the Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, in January 2010.
An oil painting, St Ives Harbour (1987) by this artist, is part of the Royal Cornwall Hospital collection.
In 1931 she exhibited with STISA and was noticed in reviews with praise. Tovey records that further exhibition work with STISA did not take up again until the 1950s.
Fisher was born in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. He was a founder member of the Society of Marine Artists in 1939, exhibiting with them until his death. However he also worked frequently in Cornwall, and was a sometime member of STISA.
The artist studied at Camberwell, London and subsequently settled in Mousehole, Cornwall.
He worked mainly in terracotta to make detailed, one-off pieces rich in texture and pattern: 'The technique I developed of recessed forms is more a play of shadows rather than the movement of light around the surface. The way I work has to do with the peculiarity of my perspective. Whatever a person does must show something of themselves. There is a world environment which fashions your ideas, concepts and attitudes. Most of my thinking comes out of the diversity of all that art is, and drawn from the enormous resources of the world.'
Fishwick was born near Accrington, Lancashire. He attended Liverpool School of Art for two years before entering the Naval service in 1942. After WWII he returned to complete his studies and acquire a teacher's diploma (1947). Though his teaching career was ever present, and he became principal of the Exeter College of Art in 1958, retiring in 1984, he always kept up an active painting and exhibition schedule. Particular friends in Cornwall were Michael CANNEY and his wife Madeleine, Jack PENDER, Paul FEILER and Alexander MACKENZIE.
From 1952 to 1983 he and his wife, Patricia FISHWICK, also an artist and a teacher of history of art, were members of the NSA. Clifford also exhibited with the Penwith Society in the 1950s and 60s. In the arts review cutting referenced in Hardie (1995, p114) foremost artists are mentioned as Patrick HERON, Paul FEILER, Peter LANYON, John TUNNARD, Dod PROCTER, Alethea GARSTIN, John WELLS, Bernard LEACH and Clifford Fishwick as all being well-represented, 'together with many youthful painters of promise working in the area.'
The artist-couple lived in Topsham, Devon, nr Exeter, where they both taught.
Patricia was born in Liverpool, and she studied there at the College of Art before attending the Exeter College of Art (1949-52) where she met her future husband, Clifford FISHWICK who was her teacher. Her own teaching subject was in the history of art at Exeter College from 1972-84.
Though the couple did not ever live in Cornwall, they were both members of the NSA (1952-83), and sent in work to the NAG shows regularly. Their home was in Topsham, Devon.
Born in New York City, the son of a map engraver, he decided early in life to become an artist.
Fisk studied in 1904 at the Art Students League, and in 1909 took life classes at the National Academy of Design, and then studied under Robert Henri at his studio, where he became a close friend of Stuart Davis.
From 1912 he studied in Paris under the Fauvist painters Pierre Laprade and Othon Friesz. There he attended the salons hosted by Leo and Gertrude Stein, making friends with many Americans abroad, and others from many countries, and attended exhibitions of work by the modernists Picasso and Matisse.
Back in the USA, he mixed with those progressive and avante garde artists who frequented Greenwich Village. He married Lucy Spalding Young, and in 1933-34, on a year’s sabbatical from his University post, he studied in England, where he John Rothenstein in Sheffield, toured Cornwall, and researched into techniques in etching in London. Some results of this experience are the titles Harbour in Penzance Cornwall (mezzotint 1935) and Penzance, Cornwall (mezzotint 1935).
A painter of coastal and marine subjects, Whybrow notices this artist in St Ives during the first decade of the 20th century. His addresses were in Cheltenham and Boscombe, Hampshire, and he appears to have travelled in Norway.
In 1897 he exhibited in Birmingham (Wood) and many other shows followed, most frequently at RI and ROI.
David Tovey, the historian of the St Ives Arts colonies, writes (2011): Fitzgerald was said to be living in Cheltenham, when he was signed in as a guest at the Arts Club by the Hobkirk brothers in February and November 1896. Accordingly, he may well have been studying art with Stuart Hobkirk in Cheltenham before deciding, on Hobkirk’s recommendation, to try the newly formed Olsson School. Certainly, he became a marine painter, in both oils and watercolours, and, by 1897, when he first exhibited his work, he was based in Boscombe, Hampshire, which was to be his home for the rest of his career.
He travelled widely and is probably best known for his depictions of the Norwegian coast. However, he also returned to West Penwith from time to time. He was a visitor at Mrs Griggs, Zennor, in November 1913, making a sketch in her Visitors' book, and Whybrow records him as a member of the Arts Club at about this time. A watercolour Silvery Morning, St Ives has appeared on the market, whilst another watercolour of Clodgy Point is dated 1927. Two of his oils, including a pure seascape entitled A Seaway, are owned by the Russell-Cotes Gallery, Bournemouth.
A New Zealand artist who lived at St Ives, he was known for his clever sketches and caricatures and remarkable comic eye. His book Caricatures from the Cornish Riviera (1910) was of local people and artists.
He published two books from his studio in St Ives, and contributed to Punch. He participated in the Show Days at St Ives in 1911, 1912 and 1913, with both caricatures and paintings, one title being Moorland. His addresses for exhibition were given as Carbis Bay, Cornwall (1912) and Exmouth, Devon (1921).
This may be Dorothy Fitzherbert, an artist with an address in Kingswear, South Devon who exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 1911, as noticed by J&G. She was also an exhibitor at NAG with the NSA in March 1908, and in the autumn exhibition of 1909.
Cara Fitzmaurice is a ceramicist based in Blackwater, near Truro.
Trained as gold- and silver-smith, he studied painting at Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts. He also trained in London and Paris. He became a well-respected and influential lecturer at Birmingham College of Art, taking annual trips to Cornwall with students, usually to Polperro with visits to St Ives. His 1936 Royal Academy exhibit was 'The Family at Polperro' - a delightful relaxed depiction, with Bernard sporting a beret. In 1939 he donated this painting to Birmingham Art Gallery in memory of his wife, who had died prematurely.
He later shared a Porthmeor studio in St Ives with David COX, with whom he became friendly in the late 1940s. His portrait of Cox was exhibited with STISA in 1949 at Swindon.
Between the years 1928-39 he exhibited in seven separate exhibitions in the Paris Salons, winning an Honourable Mention for his initial entry The Schoolboy, and both bronze and silver medals in later years.
Joanne Fleming is a Falmouth based painter. She obtained a BA (Hons) in Textiles for Fashion and Interiors at Chelsea School of Art.