21 Facts About Yvonne Drewry

Yvonne Drewry was an English artist and art teacher, noted for her work in and around Suffolk.

Yvonne Marjorie Drewry was born in Brentford, Middlesex, to Alfred F Vere Drewry and his wife Ada, nee Anniss.

Yvonne Drewry's father ran a motor parts shop on Deansgate in Manchester.

Yvonne Drewry's uncle James Sidney Drewry was an engineer and co-founder of Shelvoke and Drewry, one of the UK's largest manufacturers of municipal waste wagons and fire engines.

Yvonne Drewry was a prolific artist, working in oil, watercolour, and pen and ink.

Yvonne Drewry's work was exhibited regularly in Suffolk galleries, including an annual exhibition at the Denis Taplin Gallery in Woodbridge, Gallery 44 in Aldeburgh, Mall Galleries, Gainsborough's House, Sudbury, Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich, and in her own studio, and featured several times in local press articles; she exhibited internationally and made sales in France and the US, and is licensed through Bridgeman Images.

Yvonne Drewry's work was mainly figurative, although her later works were much more abstract in character, using vivid colours and broad brushstrokes.

Yvonne Drewry is mentioned in Patrick Trevor-Roper's influential book The World Through Blunted Sight: An inquiry into the influence of defective vision on art and character as having different colour perception in each eye.

Yvonne Drewry's works are rarely titled, and whilst the landscapes are clearly recognisable, they are not usually particularly well-known views, although she did paint Snape Maltings and Shingle Street.

Yvonne Drewry was highly commended in the 1994 Laing Art Competition.

Yvonne Drewry generally worked from life and travelled around Suffolk and Norfolk in a Fiat 238 camper van seeking suitable subjects.

In 1943 Yvonne Drewry illustrated "World Under Water, the Adventures of Matthew, Jill and Poco", published with Robert Campbell at the Symbole Press, Woodford Green, Essex.

From 1944, Yvonne Drewry created several short run private press illustrated books that she printed herself on an Albion press and bound under the imprint The Black Mill Press, and later The Centaury Press.

Yvonne Drewry illustrated existing work, including Edmund Spenser's Prothalamion, or used Japanese haiku to inspire her own illustrations; she produced a posthumous edition of the engravings of Viola Paterson, who was the niece of the painter James Paterson and mother of Drewry's friend from her Edinburgh college days, the artist Anne Paterson Wallace.

Yvonne Drewry produced her own exhibition catalogues and posters in letterpress, and created her own Christmas cards, which were usually multi-coloured linocuts, showing the influence of Joan Hassall.

Yvonne Drewry produced hand woven cloth on a floor loom, and made textile items such as applique cushions, and produced smaller craft items sold in her annual Sales of Work.

Yvonne Drewry was an important teacher of art at the Amberfield School in Nacton, in Felixstowe, and at various local authority run evening classes for adults; she ran short painting and printing courses in her own home.

Yvonne Drewry was active in various art groups including the Deben Art Group.

Yvonne Drewry's pupils included Maggi Hambling, who cites her as a major childhood influence, and Malta based artist Juliet Horncastle.

In 1941, Yvonne Drewry married Robert Alexander Campbell, whom she met at Edinburgh College of Art.

In 1977 Yvonne Drewry moved briefly to Tuddenham St Martin, before settling in Hollesley in 1980, where she lived until 2004.