Rheumatoid Arthritis Support

Marjorie Arnfield was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 25 November 1930 and brought up in Sunderland, attending Sunderland Church High School.

Her grandfather, great-uncle and two uncles were regional architects, responsible for many public buildings in the North East of England, including the Sunderland Empire Theatre.

She died on 26 April 2001 in Nottingham. In keeping with her Christian faith, her funeral service took place at Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire.

Arnfield is survived by her son Robin.

While attending Sunderland College of Art and King Edward VII College of Art, University of Durham, she was taught by distinguished British artists such as Lawrence Gowing, Quentin Bell and Victor Passmore.

She travelled extensively in the Mediterranean with her late husband, Ron Arnfield. In her paintings of scenes from the Greek islands, France and Spain, she sought to capture the vibrancy of the sun and the natural colours. She also used colour to depict emotion, for example in her mining paintings. Arnfield portrayed the energy and excitement of football when she was invited by Sunderland Football Club to watch one of their games in their new stadium, and then paint a picture of the match.

In a catalogue for an exhibition of Mediterranean Images at the Pierrepoint Gallery in Newark, Nottinghamshire, England in September 1996, Arnfield wrote of the visual inspiration of her passion for the Mediterranean: "Vines dotted in rows across spring landscapes; distant mountains; poppies, stark, clustered among ochre grasses; cyprus trees forming punctuation marks; mediaeval villages, pantiled roofs; ultramarine skies....fishermen crouched mending nets; images seen and felt, evoking a spirit of place."

Arnfield's "well-developed sense of place and sympathetic observation of people" were highlighted in the catalogue of an exhibition of her work, People and Places, at Kirkbride Gallery, Peebles, Scotland in September 1998.

She spent many years teaching art to adults and schoolchildren in England and Scotland. She also took adults on painting holidays to France and the Greek islands. Disabled due to rheumatoid arthritis, her husband Ron assisted her over the years with her exhibitions and teaching.

She was awarded the MBE in Britain’s millennium honours list in 2000, the year before her death, for her "services to art".

In 2002-2003, Ron Arnfield commissioned a professional photographer to scan much of her work, including her sketchbooks. A CD-ROM, ''Marjorie Arnfield, A Digital Library,'' was then produced. A website showcasing her work was also created, but this has now lapsed.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article Marjorie Arnfield, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki