The following is a second gallery of works, in various media, created by my mother, Phyllis Holland, from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.
The first seven were student exercises from her tenure at the Kingston School of Art, in England. They showcase an impressive facility in disciplines as varied as gouache, pen and ink, graphite, even three-dimensional window display (the “supporters” in Gay Supporters refers to the English term for suspenders, not proponents of equal rights for same-sex couples, regardless of how strangely fitting the image might be for either usage). The second-to-last is a portrait of her mother, Winifred, known to me simply as “Nan”.
The final five are samples of secondary school and childhood work, the last two being cartoon tableaux clearly influenced by Walt Disney.
The photographs, that both precede and follow the art, are of my mother and her fellow art school friends, mugging for the camera outside a fabric shop, circa 1950, as well as with others, dressed as pirates, ready for some school festivity.
