Elspeth McNamara was born in Formby, Lancashire, in 1926. As a child she was always interested in drawing and liked collecting plants and leaves to copy. At Holy Trinity school, she recalled, her art work was often displayed on the wall and one little boy often used to ask her to help him as he wasn't at all artistic.

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When she was 12, Elspeth started to attend Southport School of Art where she intended to work for her Art Teacher’s Diploma. Alongside basic subjects, she studied drawing, painting and calligraphy. Her favoured media at the time were ink and watercolour.

 

The war intervened and Elspeth left school to go to work as a tracer for the shipping company Campbell and Isherwood in Liverpool. Here, in the works canteen, she met up with someone who recognised her from Holy Trinity school as he had been a pupil there for a time. They married in 1950 when he came out of the Army and joined the Liverpool Police.

 

In 1957 they moved to Anglesey with their small daughter and it was she who suggested one year that her mother make her birthday party invitations. This, Elspeth claimed, started her painting again after several years of not doing so.

 

She entered work in local exhibitions, shows and Eisteddfodau and won many prizes. She still worked in ink and watercolour but added oil and sometimes pastel to her repertoire.

 

Elspeth particularly enjoyed painting flowers, landscapes and miniatures but as time progressed and she started to use oil, she added seascapes to her preferred subjects. She exhibited several times with the Royal Society of Marine Artists and at the International Amateur Art Exhibition. She sold some of her work locally and around Wales and Lancashire and undertook commissions from time to time but was often reluctant to part with her paintings because, she said, they cost her such a lot in terms of effort and emotion.

 

Elspeth found that Anglesey was a real inspiration to her because of the countryside and coastline. She worked a lot from photographs, sketching and trying out colours in the open air then completing the work at home.

 

Elspeth moved to Menai Bridge in 2002 and continued to work until she was 85 when ill-health prevented her from continuing. A varied collection of drawings and paintings survives this very gifted artist, a true testament to her talents.