Born in Cumbria, when at school, art was all she enjoyed and wanted to do. While her mother recognised her talent and encouraged her to draw, it was her Aunt Eleanor who, as she was to say "opened my eyes and made me aware of the beauty in the world". Despite being, as she always modestly said "only an adequate pupil at school", she gained acceptance to Lancaster College of Art and to the Royal College of Art, London, where she specialised in textile and fabric design and was taught by Lorna Parker, "a wonderful teacher", and one who was to make a considerable impact upon her.
On leaving there, this self-styled "only adequate pupil" proved good enough to gain employment as a textile designer at Liberty's in London, where she worked for several years.
It was while she was at art school and still in her teens, that she met fellow artist Jeremy King whom she later married and with whom she eventually left London for Cornwall, living at first in Port Isaac and Falmouth before settling in St Ives in the mid-1980s.
The mother of three children, Jo, Alice and Giles, although a successful textile designer, it was a while before she began painting. Despite having been surrounded by her husband's paintings from the very start of her marriage and, of course, having to care for and meet the demands of three children, it was some time before she even thought of becoming a painter.
It was at Cookham Art Club that, as a result of a talk she attended on mosaics, she saw the way forward for herself as a painter.
"It answered so many questions for me. Made me see, why worry about perspective, and showed me this is the way I want to paint."
One with decided views on art, she felt that there was no place in art for politics, doubted the importance of the Renaissance to art, and believed that "what you know, what you see" are the things that matter. Subsequent to discovering her way into painting through mosaics, she went on to exhibit widely, from the Plumbline, Wills Lane, Salt House, New Craftsman and Penwith Galleries in St Ives, to further afield from the Beaux Arts, Bath, to the Ingrid Baren Gallery, London, not forgetting the Royal Academy where she exhibited often in its summer shows.
Individual
Although she was to share a number of two-person shows, from Penzance to Falmouth, with her husband Jeremy, they remained fiercely individual and resolutely went their own ways in their art. Renowned for the sense of balance in her paintings, for her love of colour and composition and of tonal and textural values, while her use of ceramics in the foreground of her works, her combination of still life and landscape, of jugs painted with pilchard boats, carried hints of the influence of Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis, they remained essentially her own work.
Filled with ceramics, cushions and cats – the family cat Tomkin made several appearances in them – plus a touch of drama, a feeling of something significant having just happened or about to happen, they could only carry one signature – hers.
The maker of paintings that may be easy to live with, but at the same time continue to impress, to please, and to reveal more and more of their true selves, their hidden depths, the longer one is in their company, it is hard to believe that, sadly, there will now be no new paintings by the talented, modest and already much missed Brenda King.
Her funeral service was held on Friday, July 15, at Penwith Woodland Burial Place, Chyenhal, Newlyn.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN