Book of the Week: Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint by Cate Haste

Biography

Born in 1931, Sheila Fell grew up in Aspatria, a typical West Cumbrian mining village. Whilst gaining a place at the Carlisle College of Art at 17, within two years she had obtained a place at St. Martin’s School of Art, London. Here, she befriended Frank Auerbach, amongst other contemporaries, and went on to teach at the Chelsea School o... See more

Born into a mining family in rural Cumberland, British painter Sheila Fell (1931-79) studied at Carlisle College of Art, then at St Martin's School of Art in London. Though she spent her adult life in London, her artistic inspiration came from the dramatic images of the landscape of her childhood in the tough northern fells, which she interpreted w... See more

the significance doesn’t matter. The historical significance deadens it. Across those unbridgeable distances—between bird and painter, painting and viewer—I hear only too well what’s being said to me, a psst from an alleyway as Hobie put it, across four hundred years of time, and it’s really very personal and specific. It’s there in the light-rinse

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