Böcker av Piers R. Blackett

Felicity, Art, War and Peace: This is the inspiring story of an English-born artist, who, born in 1911, lost her father in the first world war. Her school years were in Italy, where her Scottish mother owned a tearoom, and where she began her art education. She married a British army officer and accompanied him to India where she attended art school. But further education was cut short in 1939 by tumultuous war years followed by two years in Germany while her second husband, Rupert, a close friend of Tommy her first husband, served in the British Army of Occupation. Both men were wounded, Rupert severely and Tommy fatally. Then, a move to South Africa in 1948 resulted in relative peace, her style evolving from classic realism to include more impressionistic representation of her subjects. After moving back to England in 1972, her work was twice accepted for exhibition by the Royal West of England Academy. She remained intent on capturing movement, expression, and communication among domestic and wild animals, and birds. The Slimbridge Wetland Centre, as well as her own garden with her ducks and rabbits, provided an ideal environment for inspiration. Missing her 100th birthday by only a few months, her century-long story captures all that her life and commitment to art encompassed, making an enduring impression on children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and friends who in many ways have contributed to preserving her memory.

A biography of Felicity Blackett (1912-2011), an English artist, supplemented by her own diaries, begins with her birth in Liverpool where her Scottish mother married a detective who became head of the Criminal Investigation Department. At the age of four, she was saddened by her father's death in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. After the war, Felicity and her mother immigrated to Italy where she had art lessons from Barbara Nash, sister of the well-known war artist brothers. Returning to England just before the war, ventures included marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a second marriage, all while working in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), caring for wounded soldiers, including her second husband. After World War II, Felicity began with consolidating her artistic talents over twenty-five years in South Africa and then four decades in England where she settled in the Cotswold Village of Dursley, staying in close touch with her extended family and friends including her American daughter and family. While in England her art was influenced by the surrounding countryside, villages, and animals especially wildfowl and scenic habitats in Gloucestershire and on visits to the Scottish border country.