Eileen Mayo

Dame Eileen Rosemary Mayo DBE (11 September 1906 – 4 January 1994) was an English-born artist and designer who worked in England, Australia and New Zealand in almost every available medium — drawings, woodcuts, lithographs on stone and tempera, tapestry and silk screening. In addition to being a printmaker, illustrator, calligrapher and muralist, she designed coins, stamps, tapestry and posters, and wrote and illustrated eight books on natural science.

She was born in Norwich and educated in Yorkshire and the Clifton High School, Bristol. She had a thorough grounding in art, studying at the Slade School in London, the Central School of Arts and Crafts and under Henry Moore at the Chelsea Polytechnic.

In 1927 she was instructed in lino-cutting by Claude Flight over the telephone. Her resulting print was called "Turkish Bath", which was included in the Redfern Gallery's 'First Exhibition of British Linocuts'. The picture was subsequently bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1940 she moved to Paris to study with Fernand Léger at the Académie Montmartre.

She held teaching positions at Saint Martin's School of Art and Sir John Cass College in London. She became a member of the Society of Wood Engravers, and wrote and illustrated a series of books. She also exhibited at the Royal Academy and with the Royal Society of British Artists. For a time she worked as an artists' model, for Bernard Meninsky, Duncan Grant, Dod Procter and particularly Laura Knight.

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