SPENCER PRYSE, Tessa
Tessa Spencer Pryse was born in Wales, one of the three daughters of artist Gerald Spencer Pryse (1882–1956) and his wife Muriel Anstace Theodora Farrall, daughter of the Rev. Laurence Farrall, who married in 1932. Tessa was educated at schools in France, rural Wales and Switzerland and at the age of 17 gained a scholarship to Byam Shaw School of Art, where she met her future husband and father of her two children. At the Byam Shaw School of Art she gained the first-year drawing prize and was considered one of the most promising first year students. She moved to the Black Isle, where her work was influenced by the Scottish Colourists. In 1991 Tessa moved to Wivenhoe in East Anglia. Tessa is a painter of interiors, figures, and landscapes direct from the subject, in whose work sunlight was an important element. She where she was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and studied printmaking under Richard Bawden, and was invited by the keeper to be guest student at the Royal Academy Schools in 1983 and in 1984 won the Oppenheim Award to pursue printmaking. She works from Wivenhoe in Essex. Mixed shows included RA Summer Exhibition, NEAC, RP, RSA and the Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition.