Mabel Pakenham-Walsh

Mabel Pakenham-Walsh (2 September 1937 − 19 August 2013) was a British painter, sculptor and designer, and pioneering female artist in post-war European figurative art. She worked in many mediums, but is particularly well known for her colourful wooden relief sculptures. Her work was significantly influenced by primitive and outsider art, and created primarily from recycled materials, earning her recognition as an early eco artist. the daughter of Robert Pakenham-Walsh, a prominent psychiatrist. Pakenham-Walsh was active in the London arts scene throughout the 1960s and '70s, and befriended many significant figures, including Lord Snowdon, Frances Bond, Martin Leman, Maeve and Mervyn Peake, Wendy Ramshaw, and Tom Stoppard. Pakenham-Walsh also taught woodcarving classes to Further Education students in Kent, England.

Education

Pakenham-Walsh trained as an artist at Lancaster and Morecambe College of Arts and Crafts (1954–58) and Wimbledon College of Art (1958-59). At that time, she was employed as a designer at Pinewood Studios, where she created set-pieces for major motion-pictures, including Cleopatra; she also worked as a sculptor at Shepperton Studios. From 1965 to 1982, she exhibited at the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. During this era, select London artists rejected abstraction and conceptualism to pursue "the depiction of the human figure and everyday landscape"; Pakenham-Walsh also sought to depict ordinary daily life, creating art that was both "playful and profound [to] invoke the deep time of human nature."

Works in public collections

Selected solo exhibitions

1984: Mabel Pakenham-Walsh: Painted Wood Carvings and Paintings at Aberystwyth Arts Centre (and tour of UK) 2006: Drawings of Aberystwyth and Beyond at Ceredigion Museum