Artist Info
Fay Bennett
Fay Bennett studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1945-1947.
From her family:
Fay Fairbairn was born in the city of Bandoeng on the Island of Java on 20th November 1928. She was the eldest of two daughters whose father, Phillip Fairbairn (otherwise known as Popeye) was a captain in both the Merchant and Royal Navy and whose mother Esther, was a teacher.
Her early years were spent in and around the South China Seas where her father sailed numerous ships leading up to and during World War 2. She spent several years as a child in Singapore much of it at Raffles hotel where the staff all knew her and would play with her while her parents were away.
In 1932, at the age of four she was sent back to England by ship, chaperoned by a convicted murderer. It is believed he had been saved from prison by Fay’s influential father, on the proviso that he carried out this important task. The man faithfully sat outside her cabin until the ship docked in England.
She then went to boarding school in the southern home counties where she stayed until she was 17yrs old. Fay’s sister went to a different school and her parents did not come back to take her away during school holidays; instead, she stayed at the school on her own except for a chaperone. As a result of such a lonely, isolated and anti-social life, Fay got used to her own company and developed her love of books, travel and art, seemingly as a means of escapism. During this period, she also spent two years in hospital with TB.
It is believed that she attended The Central School of Arts and Crafts College from 1945 – 1947.
She married Gordon Bennett in 1950 and lived for a while in Nottingham before moving down to Upminster in Essex, where she later became a primary school teacher. She had three children: Amanda, Caroline and Nicolas. During the last 40 or so years of her life, her priority was to travel the world, conducting archaeological digs, visiting churches, lecturing in medieval architecture and of course observing art in all its forms. Her photograph albums and sketch books demonstrate her sharp eye for detail and the extent of her travels across almost every continent.
Fay was an intensively private person and died at home on May 25th 2014. It was only on clearing her flat, that in addition to several thousand books about art and travel, her family discovered thousands of drawings, writings, sketches, paintings and diaries. But most important of all, they came across two large folders containing the interesting and important body of work that has now been donated to Central St Martins. None of her family had ever seen it.
Her family found a quote in one of her many books of writings, which may sum up the one thing in her life that gave her true pleasure and joy:
“Art gives us – those of us who appreciate it – a peculiar happiness that nothing else gives us. I know it sounds ridiculous to those who don’t feel it, but there it is.”
