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ANN LE BAS
Born:
Camberley,
Surrey, 1923
Lived:
Winsford
Recording made: 1999
Length of recording:
1 hr 52 mins
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Ann le Bas is Winsford's most established artist. She and her father came to live with her grandparents when she was six. She had a pony and a governess, was great friends with the gardener, and sat quietly in meetings of the Exmoor Pony Society, which her grandfather had founded. She went to boarding school, then came back and worked in the civil defence before going to art college in London.
She is a member of the English Art Club and of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and first hung in the Royal Academy in her early 20s. She says painting is a way of life. When not in her studio she immerses herself in village life, most recently fighting to save the school, and when that failed helping set up a trust to buy it for the community.
Her days of painting on the moor are over now, she says, there are too many people.