Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown Artist

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Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown Artist is an intimate examination of the life of SHEILA DENNING, one of the many women painters who worked in Britain in the twentieth century, but whose work received little or no attention from the art establishment. Sheila was the author’s mother.

Born in 1920 to an Anglo-Irish family, Sheila lost her favourite brother in WWII. In the grief-filled years that followed, and despite a dispiriting experience at Camberwell School of Art, she painted a series of compelling self portraits.

Once married, Sheila allowed the needs of her clay-worker husband to set the agenda and her career floundered. But in the late 1960s, newly separated and a lone parent, she produced a stream of extraordinary portraits of people in her immediate circle. These were brave, honest paintings, the work of an artist who looked deeply into the faces of her sitters.

Working within the genre of memoir, Thornhill interrogates Sheila’s paintings with her own painter’s eyes in an attempt to understand who her mother was. She dramatizes incidents and conversations remembered from childhood; she quotes from Sheila’s letters, poems and an incomplete autobiography. The narrative is driven forward by the author’s deep love for her mother, her need to disentangle herself from an overly close mother-daughter relationship and her desire to fathom what got in the way of Sheila thriving as an artist.

Praise for Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown Artist

‘Equal parts courageous, intimate and generous. This elegant exploration of a mother’s legacy, through her paintings, is so very tender.’ Rhiannon Flood, writer.

‘Teresa Thornhill’s exquisite new memoir captures Sheila Denning’s life, times, art and family with clarity and insight.’ Sara Robertson-Jonas, artist.

‘With a quiet observing eye, Thornhill tells how her mother combined motherhood with her absorbing passion – painting. Hers was a vulnerable predicament. The writing, compassionate and honest, makes for a deeply satisfying memoir.’ Catherine Wilson, artist.