Terence Ernest Manitou Frost was born at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire on 13 October 1915. He was raised by his grandparents Edith and Thomas Lines. He never knew his father, but believed that he might once have met him as a child. He was educated first at the Rugby Road School and then, between the ages of 11 and 14, he attended Leamington Spa Central School, where he was art editor of the school magazine. In 1930 he got his first job at Curry’s cycle shop in the town. Then, from 1932 to 1939, having joined the Territorial Army, he worked at Armstrong Whitworth in Coventry, painting red, white and blue roundels on to the wings of fighter planes and bombers. His early war years saw him serving in France, Palestine and Lebanon. After joining the Commandos, he fought in Crete, where he was captured by the Germans in June 1941. He was interned in camps in Salonika and Poland, ending up in 1943 at Stalag 383 in Bavaria. Frost was later to say: ‘In prisoner-of-war camp I got tremendous spiritual experience, a more aware or heightened perception during starvation, and I honestly do not think that that awakening has ever left me.’ He began to draw and paint, mainly portraits of his fellow PoWs, encouraged by Adrian Heath. They made brushes from horsehair, canvasses from their pillows, and mixed what pigments they could get with the oil from sardine tins. Frost said ‘Prison camp was my university’. Returning to the Midlands, he married Kathleen May Clarke in 1945. In 1946 Frost moved with his wife and first child down to Cornwall. They lived first in a caravan at Carbis Bay, then moved to a cottage in Quay Street, St Ives, in 1947, where they stayed until 1964 and where the rest of their six children were born. He studied at Leonard Fuller’s St Ives School of Painting. He exhibited with the St Ives Society of Artists in the deconsecrated Mariners’ Church (known locally as the New Gallery), in the ‘advanced’ group of artists, tucked away in a corner by the font; also in the saloon bar of the ‘Castle Inn’ on Fore Street; at the back of Downing’s Bookshop on Fore Street; and in his studio at No 4 Piazza, which he shared with Wing Commander ‘Bunny’ Stone, an aeronautical artist. The artistic community at that time included Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, Adrian Stokes and his wife Margaret Mellis, the potter Bernard Leach, Sven Berlin, John Wells, Guido Morris, Brian Wynter, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and John Tunnard – with summer visits from London-based artists such as Heath and Victor Pasmore. Frost obtained an ex-Serviceman’s grant and entered the Camberwell School of Art in 1947. In 1951 he worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. His first one-man show was held at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1952. He went on to teach at the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham Court from 1952, and was the Gregory Fellow at Leeds University 1954 to 1956, teaching at Leeds School of Art from 1956 to 1957. He became a member of the London Group in 1958 and exhibited regularly in London. His first international one-man show was held in 1961 at the Bertha Schaeffer Gallery, New York. Further solo exhibitions include the ICA, London (1971) and the Serpentine Gallery, London (1976) organised by the Arts Council and South West Arts, touring to Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds, Chester, Birmingham and Plymouth. Frost’s artistic inspiration came from nature and included something of the pagan, as he himself said. The sun, the moon and glittering water, as well as boats and the female form, all figured prominently, abstracted into sensuous circles and curves and coloured in dramatic blues, reds, oranges, yellows and blacks. In his very best work, produced over perhaps half a dozen years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Frost showed that he could hold his own against any abstract painter then alive. He was appointed Artist in Residence at the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University in 1964, became a full time lecturer at the Department of Fine Art, Reading University 1965, and went on to become Professor of Painting at the University of Reading from 1977 to 1981. In 1974 Frost moved permanently to Newlyn, where his love of the region proved a rich source of inspiration for much of his work. He was elected RA in 1992 and was knighted in 1998. Sir Terry Frost died on 1 September 2003. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Mayor Gallery, London in 1990.