ELECTED IN 1994
Born in 1927, Ishbel McWhirter is an international artist who was born in London, took her first steps in Glasgow and then was brought up in North Wales. Her father was Scottish and her Welsh mother’s forebears include the bard Hedd Wyn.
Her insightful mother sent her to A.S. Neill’s progressive boarding school, Summerhill, which evacuated from Suffolk to Ffestiniog during the war. The dramatic landscape surrounding her made a very deep impression on the teenager.
At a Summerhill exhibition, held at the Arcade Gallery in London, Ishbel was ‘discovered’ and hailed by the BBC as a rising star. The following year at the age of eighteen she held her first solo exhibition in London’s Bond Street. Later, her work came to the attention of the great Viennese artist Oskar Kokoschka, who invited her to become his pupil in London.
Ishbel painted the mountains of Snowdonia from her studio on the Menai Strait for many years. She now lives in Hampstead.
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