Biography
Mary Farmer (b. 1940 - d. 2021) studied Fine Art at Beckenham School of Art (1958-1961) followed by a prestigious Digswell Arts Fellowship (1964). This was the visionary arts residency programme established by Henry Morris in 1957 and whose other early residents or ‘fellows’ included Michael Andrews, Peter Collingwood and Hans Coper. She established her first studio in Guildford developing her ideas in both gouache and tapestry with the latter attracting early interest: the V&A Museum's Circulation Department made an important acquisition of a monochrome rugin 1967 and works were included in the significant USA touring show of British design organised with the Smithsonian (1969-1971).
Farmer began teaching at Farnham Art School and received major awards from South East Arts (1979) and the Crafts Council (1980) which cemented her position as a leading figure in innovative contemporary tapestry. She participated in the ground-breaking craft-designer exhibition The Maker's Eye (1981) organised by Ralph Turner Head of Exhibitions at the Crafts Council. In the same year she and her husband, the potter Terry Moores, acquired a early nineteenth-century wharf side building in Boston, Lincolnshire, which they converted into studios and living accommodation, and which remained her creative base throughout her life. Farmer joined the Textile Department at the Royal College of Art, London as a tapestry tutor going on to establish and develop a newly independent Tapestry Course within the Fine Art Painting School until its closure in 1997.
Her mastery of colour and inventive use of the language of abstraction in weave led to a growing number of invitations to exhibit both nationally and internationally with works acquired by the Government Art Collection; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; Crafts Council and the late HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. Important public commissions and acquisitions included the British Oxygen Company; Channel 4 Television and Lambeth Palace. Her active career came to an end in the late 1990s following injury and illness which made it impossible for her to work.
