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It is no exaggeration to say that with the death on Monday, in St Julia's
Hospice, Hayle, only a few weeks before his 88th birthday, of Sir Terry
Frost RA, a light has been switched off. Cornwall's own "Sunshine
Boy", the county will be that much darker without him.
Possessor of a tremendous sense of humour, talking to him was always
as good as a tonic. Never pretentious, I remember a conversation with
him in his garden when, with the large blue rims of his spectacles reflecting
the superb blue sweeps of the bay that stretches below his home and studio
high on the hill above Newlyn, he spoke of Picasso's early passion for
the colour blue and with typical candour confessed: "The only blue
period I ever had was when a paint factory burnt down near Leeds, and
I had all the blue paint that was thrown out." A man who was to become
one of this country's leading abstract artists, born in Leamington Spa,
he came relatively late to painting. Leaving school at the age of 14,
he never forgot the ten and tenpence a week he earned then or the Hunger
Marches of the time. An army reservist, he was called up soon after the
start of the Second World War and two years later, while serving as a
Commando in Crete, was taken prisoner and subsequently spent almost four
years behind the wire. He freely admitted that this was his university.
"For the first time I met people who read, who knew about poetry,
music and painting. I discovered, too, that there's more good in people
than bad, even in the chap who stole my bread!" It was in Stalag
353 in Bavaria that he met the artist Adrian Heath, and it was him who
encouraged Terry Frost to paint and also pointed him towards Cornwall.
He first came to the far west in 1946 when he lived, with his wife Kathleen,
in a caravan at Carbis Bay. He attended Leonard Fuller's School of Painting
in St Ives and Penzance School of Art, where he obtained a diploma in
design which helped him qualify for a government grant and gained him
admission to Camberwell School of Art where he came under the influence
of Victor Pasmore and where he made his first abstract painting.
In 1950 he came back to Cornwall, to St Ives where he worked as an assistant
to Barbara Hepworth. "For 18 shillings a day we helped carve her
Contrapuntal Forms for the Festival of Britain." It was an encounter
with physical shapes that became something of a watershed in his career.
Indeed, the shock was so great that he stopped painting for several months,
and it was then that he began experimenting with collage which, to a certain
extent, has been present in his work ever since.
"I was learning all the time then, from walking through the landscape
with Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton to having Ben Nicholson in his studio
next to mine, it was marvellous - a time when no reputations had been
made and we shared everything."
One who since then has made an indelible mark upon the art world at large,
in February of this year his work filled the Tate St Ives, and only recently
a new book on his life and work "Warm Frost" was published by
Alison Hodge, such was his strength that there can be very few unable
to recognise his work at a glance. Knighted by the Queen in 1998, an artist
who exhibited throughout the world and received almost every honour to
be had in his field, he never failed to entertain or excite. Whatever
medium he used, whatever idea he pursued, his creations reflected his
sunny personality.
Although much of his time was spent in passing on his wisdom and wit
to others, he taught at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, was the Gregory
Fellow in Painting at Leeds University, lectured at the Universities of
Reading and Newcastle, he is still a Professor Emeritus at Reading, and
even taught at summer schools in Norway and Canada, he always returned
to Cornwall where, as he said: "I'm in touch with forever, I feel
it through my feet."
It was 19 years ago that he left St Ives for Newlyn where, until quite
recently and despite being ill, he has been working on his latest project,
a portfolio of illustrations of the words of the Spanish poet Frederico
Garcia Lorca
Ever generous in his response to and support of local appeals and events,
a colourful character in every sense, a lover of life and laughter, his
death leaves a hole in the county's and the country's canvas impossible
to fill. To say that he will be greatly missed by his army of admirers
is an understatement, but no one will miss him more than his wife Kathleen,
their daughter Katie and their five sons, Adrian, Anthony, Matthew, Simon
and Stephen.
The funeral service is at 11 am on Tuesday, in St Peter's Church, Newlyn
article copyright © THE CORNISHMAN
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