Joanna Carrington; Painter
Hyfler/Rosner
Versatile painter with a distinctive style
22 November 2003
Joanna Carrington, painter: born 6 November 1931; twice married (one
daughter); died Poitiers, France 13 November 2003.
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Joanna Carrington was one of the most talented and versatile artists of her
generation, producing paintings with both strength and sensitivity, ranging
from stark Spanish landscapes to warm English interiors, which always
conveyed her own originality.
She came from a Bloomsbury background: her father Noel Carrington was a
publisher who worked closely with Allen Lane at Penguin, for whom he created
the elegant Puffin Books. Her aunt was Dora Carrington, the now-famous
painter who committed suicide after her beloved Lytton Strachey died.
But Joanna never met her aunt, and she was determined to escape from the
Bloomsbury tradition, to create her own style. She studied in Suffolk under
Cedric Morris, who thought he had never had a student who showed so much
promise; and later in Paris under Fernand Léger who insisted on bold drawing
and tight composition, but only praised work which resembled his own.
She went on to the Central School in London where her teachers, including
Keith Vaughan, Mervyn Peake and Louis le Brocquy, encouraged personal
expression; and gained a Queen's scholarship which led to her first
exhibitions, including "Six Young Contemporaries" at the ICA. She married
Mick Pilcher, a designer, and went with him to live in Nigeria where she
painted little. But after a divorce she lived in Notting Hill where she
found a studio and painted with great energy. In 1962 Joanna Carrington held
her first one-person show at the new Establishment Club in Soho - where
Frankie Howerd was performing downstairs.
She taught at the Hornsey and Byam Shaw schools, and the Regent Street
Polytechnic, while establishing her own distinctive style, and her own
following. In 1966 she was married again, to Christopher Mason, himself an
original film-maker and painter who brought unswerving support and
enthusiasm to her work, and served as her impresario.
She held several exhibitions - some jointly with Christopher - and wrote a
book Landscape Painting for Beginners (1971). She relaxed from her serious
paintings by producing naïve pictures incognito under the name Reginald
Pepper: they were exhibited at the Portal Gallery in the Seventies which was
unaware of their real provenance: but even after Joanna Carrington was
exposed her Peppers still sold well.
In the Eighties Joanna and Christopher spent much of their time in France,
where they eventually settled in St Savin in central France. They inspired
each other's painting, made their own gallery space and created their own
confident artistic world, self-sufficient but warmly hospitable.
They returned to England only occasionally, to see friends and attend their
exhibitions, regularly at the Thackeray gallery in Kensington, London. Later
they moved to an old mill in France which they lovingly restored, where
Joanna spent her last year fighting with cancer which eventually defeated
her.
Anthony Sampson