Biography

Enid Crowther was born in Yorkshire. She was first educated at Heckmondwike Grammar School, West Yorkshire, then later at Derby Teacher Training College, where she obtained a Teaching Certificate. She then started teaching in a primary school but stopped for a year to study art at Leeds College of Art. She finished the course in one year instead of two. She then went back to primary school teaching but later obtained a post at Clacton College of Education, where she taught girls to become teachers. She was then appointed Head of the Art Department in the Teachers Training Department of the University of Kingston when that department was the second largest in the country. She retired at the age of 55 when she decided to travel around the world. She regularly went to France but also to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Because she travelled alone, often on buses, she happened to sit and chat with people and that way got to know many people whom she invited back to her house in Great Bentley. While in Essex she was a member of Colchester Art Society. She was Chairman of the Society from 1971 to 1974, when John Nash (q.v.) was President. She regularly exhibited at the Minories and at her house in Great Bentley.

Statement

Enid enjoyed painting landscapes. During the long school holidays she would go to France with her van, bought especially to carry large canvases. She especially liked Provence, where she painted this picture in the early 1960s and always preferred to work with oil; her studio is full of oil paintings,  working from the colours she saw in nature and when painting landscapes en plein air she often preferred to use a drawing board, paper and pastels (or watercolour) rather than oil and canvas. She then transferred the sketches into oil paintings. All her paintings are in the name of Crowther.

Selected Exhibitions

The Minories, Colchester, Enid Crowther and R. Clitherow, 1978, CAS sponsored; The Best of the Minories, 1980 (July 5-27)