Eileen Elizabeth Jefferd Bowerbank was born at Clifton, Bristol on 28 October 1907. She was the elder daughter of John Bowerbank, a bank manager, and his wife Margaret, an amateur cellist. Her parents were hostile to Eileen’s artistic ambitions, so instead, she studied the piano.  In 1937 she married consultant surveyor Randall Bell, at which point, her life as an artist began. In 1939 she joined the St John’s Wood School of Art, with teachers including the co-principals Patrick Millard and Ernest Perry, plus Kenneth Martin, a producer of constructions and kinetic work. Fellow students included such notables as Michael Ayrton and John Minton, ‘very much admired by me, Minton especially, and miles above my head’, Bell later recalled. ‘I remember feeling exceedingly flattered by seeing them standing looking at a canvas of mine and Ayrton saying: ‘She has a very good sense of tone. She might be the English Utrillo one day.’ (The said canvas was not good, a mess, in fact). That same year, Bell joined the Artists International Association and continued to show with it. Among her exhibitions was one shared with the Scottish Colourist Anne Redpath, as well as appearances at other London venues. Randall Bell’s job took him around wartime England, including Oxford, where their only child, Sebastian, was born. Eileen was wholly sympathetic when Sebastian wanted to study music and he went on to become principal flautist with the London Sinfonietta and to teach at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1947 the Bells returned to London and Eileen resumed her studies at the Anglo-French Art Centre, which followed on from the closed St John’s Wood School. There she was taught by Oskar Kokoschka and Jean Lurçat. As well as a trained musician, Bell was also a potter, interior designer, writer and the early cultural mentor of the television gardener and writer Alan Titchmarsh. From the late 1950’s until well into the ‘60’s, she was a visiting designer of house interiors with the Council of Industrial Design. In that period her activities included work for Woman magazine, a couple of show-houses at the Ideal Home Exhibition, wallpaper and textiles for Sanderson’s, textiles for Elizabeth Eaton Ltd, commissions for private clients and interiors for the Lygon Arms at Broadway, in Worcestershire. In 1967 Bell slipped on clay in the potting studio and broke her arm, putting her out of action for quite a while. Undaunted, she crocheted rugs and wrote two children’s books for Puffin: Tales from the End Cottage (1970) and More Tales from the End Cottage (1972). They recalled Sebastian’s childhood in Northamptonshire and the animals where they lived. In 1969 Alan Titchmarsh, a student at the nearby Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, called on Bell, seeking digs. The event was a turning point in his life, as he wrote in his 2002 memoir, Trowel and Error, and his introduction to the catalogue of her 2003 retrospective. As well as the cosy, Bloomsbury-style environment, Titchmarsh enjoyed ‘wonderful soups and stews, and her own brand of moussaka, and wine – sometimes home-made (her oak leaf had a particularly detrimental effect on the legs).’ He recalled: ‘But it was in the ‘art department’ that Eileen Bell excelled. She put it upon herself to educate me – not in a bossy domineering way but simply to share her passion for painting and writing, concerts, and theatre, and I lapped it up. She took me to the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square to admire Fragonard’s Girl on a Swing. We went to the National Theatre, to Proms at the Albert Hall and concerts on the South Bank. In the mid-1970’s, Eileen Bell and her husband Randall settled in Suffolk, first at Drinkstone, then nearby at Tostock, with visits to Walberswick and Aldeburgh for painting inspiration. As well as showing widely in the region, in 1989 she had a solo exhibition at the Duncalfe Galleries in Harrogate, introducing her work to a new and enthusiastic public. Although a prolific artist, Bell’s final years were curtailed and finally ended by her failing eyesight. Her 2003 retrospective at the Chappel Galleries, near Colchester, defiantly presented her as a rich colourist, producing still-lifes with a quirky perspective and sea and beach scenes inspired by the Suffolk coastline. Eileen Bell spent her twilight years in a care home at Leiston, Suffolk, where she died on 27 January 2005.