Design and Art Australia Online

Designer of textiles, painter, china painter, leatherworker and art teacher was born in Western Australia on the 2nd of February 1920 to Louisa May Smith n_e Forbes and her husband Dr Eric Smith. Her mother a teacher of music, singing and painting prior to her marriage, was a painter and member of the Western Australian Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts who became a well-known china painter. She had studied art under Francesco Vanzetti.

The family set off later in 1920 for Los Angeles and Edinburgh where her father completed his medical training. They returned to Perth in 1927. She attended St Clare’s College where her teacher was Miss Brockway and later St Mary’s Girls School under Margaret Saunders whose Perth School of Art she had also attended on Saturdays. Saunders, her mentor for ten years, encouraged her to make her own designs and had shown her how to make repeat patterns for printing. Forbes-Smith studied commercial art from 1941-43 at Perth Technical School under Iris Francis and Ivor Hunt and followed that with general art studies to 1946. She was one of the first students to graduate from Perth Technical College with the Art Teachers Diploma. The hours had been rigorous 9-4pm and 8-9.30 five days a week.

Forbes-Smith travelled regularly with her father making four trips to Singapore in the 1930s and 1952. Sketches made on the voyages were later incorporated into designs for textiles. Forbes-Smith learnt china painting from Grace Nicholls and showed regularly with the Western Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society. In the August 1939 exhibition at Newspaper House Art Gallery she exhibited two designs for needlework, a design for centrepieces and a lampshade. However it was textile designs in 1941 which were described in a newspaper of the day as: “Not only modern but in accordance with the most modish fashion tends, and practical. Particularly attractive is a diagonal conventionalized design in native weapons, boomerangs, woomeras and the like in agreeable stripes. There is an unusual combination of leschenaultia and boomerangs. The whole range of exhibits, selected by art authorities, though comparatively small, is constructive and encouraging.”

Forbes-Smith exhibited leatherwork and textile designs with the Women’s Society in 1945 the year she was invited to become member of The Studio Club, which met in the Turf Club building in central Perth. Other members were Margaret Johnson, Audrey Greenhalgh, Nell Chappell, Iris Francis, Aimee Santo Crimp and Dorothy Hanton n_e Stubbs. She enjoyed the critical involvement of this supportive women’s group. Forbes-Smith also taught private classes for girls in the club premises. In 1947 she studied at the Adelaide School of Design under Davis and Hoffman but ill with rheumatism returned after six months.

Forbes-Smith joined the Perth Society of Artists in 1948. She would have to leave Western Australia to pursue a career as a textile designer as the manufacturing base was not there and this was not something she wished to do so instead she became a painter and teacher until she married Herbert Clement Kentish in 1952 and resigned from teaching. Forbes-Smith taught at Park School, St Hilda’s Girls School, Guildford Grammar School and Lady Lawley Cottage. After her marriage she lived on a dairy farm in Keysbrook, was active locally, teaching art and brought up three children. In 1952 she exhibited Bolinda Vale, Keysbrook with the Perth Society of Artists. In the 1960s and the 1970s when her children were grown she took trips to South Africa, New Zealand and the various states of Australia exhibiting her work or teaching painting on cruise ships.

RED SECTIONS

Writers:

Dr Dorothy Erickson

Date written:

2010

Last updated:

2011