Diana Armfield

orn in 1920, Diana Armfield was a late starter as a painter. Although she attended three art schools (Bournemouth, The Slade, and the Central School of Art and Design), she studied to be a designer, not a painter. She duly set up a successful design practice, in 1947, with Roy Passano, designing and printing textiles, both by block and screen, and designing wallpapers. In the 1950s, she also found work as a teacher, first at the Central in the textile department, and later at Byam Shaw School of Art teaching drawing – landscape, mostly. But it was not until 1965, when she was asked to teach painting, that she herself began to paint – at the age of 45. Before that, remarkable as this seems,