Deirdre Borlase

1925-2018

Deirdre Borlase lived in the Dales but grew up in Margate and was one of the first artists to exhibit at Zillah Bell and continued to show her paintings, prints, decorated ceramics - and even computer generated images - until a year or two before she died.

She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art to study graphics where, in spite of professorial resistance, she concentrated on painting. Post war she became a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, signing her name 'D. Borlase' to disguise her gender. (Ironically her son Patrick, now an RA, works under the name of 'Bob and Roberta Smith' to redress the balance.) When he asked her the secret of a good life, she replied "Get a good pencil, a 2B or a 3B, not an HB - they are for architects."