User:Cortina driver/rachel reckitt

Rachel Reckitt (1908 - 1995) worked as an artist, sculptor and wood engraver.

She was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire but moved to Golsoncott House, a Lutyens style house in the parish of Old Cleeve in West Somerset in 1922. The house was described by her niece, Penelope Lively, in her autobiographical book, A House Unlocked, published in 2001. Aside from travelling and studying Reckitt remained at Golsoncott all her life and it was both her home and her studio.

Reckitt studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in the late 1930s under lain Macnab. Here she was influenced by Mark Gertler and Graham Sutherland. Following this she went on to attend Hammersmith School of Building Crafts from 1940 to 1945, followed by the Central School of Art and Design where she studied lithography.

In 1937 Reckitt was commissioned by brewers Arnold and Hancock to create sculptured inn signs for several local public houses including the Valiant Soldier in Roadwater, The Butchers Arms in Carhampton and the Blackbird Inn at West Buckland. These signs, constructed from metal and wood are still in use today.

Apart from her work in printmaking and paint, Reckitt was a keen sculptor, producing work in a variety of media including stone, tin, steel and aluminium. During the 1970s her she visited a local forge in Roadwater where she initially drew and painted the smiths at work before learning how to use the forge and anvil herself at the age of 62. Reckitt joined the British Artists Blacksmiths Association and undertook commissions for local churches, including a sculpture for the Chapel of St Bartholomew at Rodhuish and a screen for the Church of St Andrew, Old Cleeve.

In 2011 an exhibition of Reckitt's work was shown at the Church House in Crowcombe, Somerset. The collection belonged to David and Louise Walker who had bought it impulsively at an auction in 1995. The exhibition was the first time many of Reckitt's works had been seen collectively is dispersed.