Our tribute to the artist Jennifer Beresford
Jennifer Beresford died suddenly on June 10th 2020 at 79 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. She was an accomplished artist whose ability to capture the essence of Brighton was widely appreciated.
From her early childhood in India to her long and fulfilling life in the UK Jennifer was a very accomplished painter, teacher and art historian.
Having graduated in Fine Art from Liverpool after which she later moved to London, where at the age of 25 she became Head of Art at South Hampstead High School for Girls, as well as continuing her first love, painting. Her teaching career developed and, after she moved to Brighton with her young daughter Emma she became head of art at Brighton & Hove School for Girls and finally Kings Manor School in Shoreham. Having been fortunate enough to know Jenny for 35 years and to have become her son in law I benefitted from her passion and enthusiasm for the arts. She had a rare blend of extensive knowledge, talent and an infectious enthusiasm that contributed to my own love for all things creative.
Perhaps some of her most significant creative achievements came when she retired from teaching and began painting full-time, doing Artist Open Houses from 2003 to 2018, and being short-listed for the Lyn–Painters and Stainers Prize in 2010.
She had thousands of visitors to her Open Houses, engaging with all of them and forming some good friendships along the way. Each year she would have five or six other artists show with her, using her lifelong skills to give people pride and confidence in their work.
Jenny has been called a significant painter of Brighton, in that she has captured this town in all its aspects from the rundown Jubilee development, the faded elegance of the seafront, to the opulent splendour of the Pavilion, all with her passion for detail, fabulous colour palette and compositional skills that always made her constructed landscapes feel balanced and cohesive.
Jenny and I worked together on creating limited edition prints, a process in which she was interested in and was demanding but always grateful for the final results.
With an archive of 50 paintings, she presented her collectors with views and celebrations of Brighton, still life, abstracts and private commissions that will be cherished for many generations to come.
Jenny was our first customer at Eye 4 Colour over a decade ago we remained firm friends.
I hope that in time to come we’ll continue to honour her legacy through editions and a celebration of her creative talent.
Graeme Richardson-Locke
graeme@eye4colourprints.co.uk
