1. Margaret Nairne Mellis was a Scottish artist, one of the early members and last survivors of the group of modernist artists that gathered in St Ives, in Cornwall, in the 1940s.
13 Facts About Margaret Mellis
1. 2.
Margaret Mellis later married Francis Davison, an artist, and became a mentor to the young Damien Hirst.
3.
Margaret Mellis's family returned to East Lothian when she was one year old, shortly after the First World War broke out, so her father David Barclay Mellis-Smith could join up.
4.
Margaret Mellis used a travel scholarship to study with Andre Lhote in Paris.
5.
Margaret Mellis met the art critic Adrian Stokes in 1936 and they married in 1938.
6.
Margaret Mellis was encouraged to paint small abstract works, and to produce intricate collage.
7.
Margaret Mellis was inspired by the naive painter Alfred Wallis.
8.
Margaret Mellis left the St Ives area in 1946 after the breakdown of her marriage.
9.
Margaret Mellis and Stokes divorced in 1946, and he subsequently married her younger sister the ceramic artist Ann Stokes.
10.
Margaret Mellis died in 2009 and was survived by her son, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
11.
In 1980 Margaret Mellis started making constructions out of found pieces of driftwood, which was to become her central practice until the end of her career.
12.
Margaret Mellis exhibited infrequently through much of her life, and Hirst considers that her work has been unduly neglected.
13.
Margaret Mellis's work is featured in major collections such as the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts Council Collection, The Fleming Collection, City Art Centre, Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland.