The Hereford Times

Rhoda relaunches to fly solo for the first time

10:16am Thursday 23rd August 2007

FOR energy, enthusiasm and sheer get-up-and-go, there can be few people, old or young, to rival Presteigne artist Rhoda Partridge.

Currently Rhoda's great source of pleasure is her upcoming solo exhibition - Decorative plants and weird birds - her first, at the age of 87.

"I think what's happening to me at 87 is absolutely brilliant," she says.

Not that Rhoda is any stranger to succeeding at what she's set her mind to.

The daughter of a war artist, Leila Faithfull, Rhoda was discouraged by her mother from pursuing a career in art and instead left school at 15-and-a-half, met her husband at 16, was married soon afterwards and a mother herself by 19, with five children by the time she reached 30.

It was only when her husband Graham, a farmer and businessman, wouldn't pay for the gliders she had developed a passion for that she discovered her own creativity.

"I started making art at about 41," she recalls. "I fell madly in love with flying gliders and needed to make some money, so I took a five-day course and then set up a pottery. I was lucky that I had a tutor I could ring when things went wrong."

Obviously they didn't go too wrong as her work "sold like crazy and bought me the most beautiful gliders, one after another".

Rhoda's call sign for all four of her state-of-the-art gliders was Broomstick, though in truth there is little of the witch about her, though she certainly makes things happen, with not a little charm.

Despite going on to claim the women's altitude record, Rhoda claims to be a very, very nervous woman but determined.

"My children think I'm an absolute scream," she says. "But they are very proud of me."

Rhoda's move into printmaking was the result of an equally instant falling out of love with gliding, when, looking at the sky one day she recognised that the passion had gone. She was also beginning to find making pottery cold and heavy.

"What I most loved about it was the decorating, so I wondered if I could learn to work in two dimensions."

Having made the decision, and at a time when most women might have decided to take things a little easier, Rhoda opted for a change of direction and went to Hereford College of Art and Design (now Hereford College of Arts) to re-train - at the age of 70.

At the end of her time at the college, her tutor Paul Scull helped her to set up her print studio.

"The going was quite rough for a bit," she says. "It's a terribly difficult technique and I'm a bit slapdash. But gradually I got better."

Rhoda remembers that her first sale was a print of two birds looking rather surprised. "My husband said he hoped the sale had not been sullied by acquaintance, but it was not sold to a friend."

Following Graham's death four years ago, Rhoda once again demonstrated the extraordinary spirit at her core, drawing up a document entitled The re-launch of Rhoda, a re-launch which involved recruiting local artist Peter Horrocks to help her start work again. Stunned when he gave her homework, Rhoda once more rose to the challenge and began drawing again and then making prints.

Since her first sale of the surprised birds, Rhoda has exhibited regularly, especially at the Presteigne Art Fair, but her forthcoming exhibition at The Old School Room in Bleddfa is the first time she has gone solo on the ground.

The exhibition is open from 2-7 September, 2-5pm daily.