The Art of Happiness
Ursula Radford has painted since childhood, always using her imagination. Evacuated from London, on the back seat of a motorcycle, clinging to her father, she was destined to be brought up by grandparents who owned an hotel in Southsea. She was encouraged to amuse herself on rainy days and during the winter by a busy grandmother and was put under a huge table in the kitchen, which was used as a servery.
paper, but not content with this, she would lay back and paint secret, treasured, pictures on the underneath of the tabletop. Unfortunately, they were bombed out just a few days before D Day, but soldiers waiting to go to France helped to rescue the family; pulling out some of the furniture as they searched, including the kitchen table.
Her grandfather gave her paints and
way, grandmother saw the paintings accumulated over the years for the first time, and couldn’t believe it was her table. Ursula clearly remembers the clip around the ears she received when grandmother realised who was responsible for the artwork that amused the soldiers during a grim task.
Vivid is the memory that Ursula retains of smiling soldiers and that wartime experience probably gave reason to her art work as she developed it through teenage years after leaving school at fourteen. Training as a hairdresser her boss told her to think she was painting a beautiful creation when fashioning a new hairstyle that would lift the spirits of a customer.
She says that she has always tried to paint something that would make people happy, bring a smile to faces, lift someone’s spirits.
Without the privilege of training, or going to college, her range of painting extended through various media as she began to follow a career path, using her ability as an organiser.
was successful in restoring an historic fair, Free Mart Fair, in Portsmouth and also began organising craft fairs in the 1960s that became huge for their time. In
34 Taking a petition to Parliament she
Watching it man-handled out of the
the 70s she went on to assist promoting world renowned entertainment artists, organising open air events drawing 100,000 or more visitors; and adding broadcasting and writing to her activities in the 80s while occasionally painting throughout.
began to dominate her work emerging first as a ‘Tranquility’ series of dream-style landscapes and rural scenes of bygone days that featured in an exhibition in St Ives. In the 1990s she developed Conspectus Art from techniques she observed in mediaeval cartography but it was her work inspired by the countryside, children, folklore, the
Living in Devon by then, a style
worlds of yesteryear that satisfied her yearning to paint pictures that made people happy. Accepted into the Association of British Naïve Artists, Ursula developed a style her husband named The Art of Happiness (AoH) which rewards her with smiles and happiness when others see her paintings.
private collections abroad in the USA, France, the Cayman Islands, Spain, Canada, Ireland, and it was recently exhibited in the USA throughout the Stationery and Art Conventions in New York.
Ursula’s work can now be found in
Commissions now take most of her time, including a work for the Head of the Romany Gypsies who had
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