‘I have finally moved into song'

Best known as the creative force behind Dicky and Daffy, it was her son’s death that prompted Annie Tempest to learn ‘the grammar of the sculptor’s language’, discovers Ian Collins

- Ian Collins

ANNIE TEMPEST’S cartoon strip in COUNTRY LIFE has long been the reason why, as the late Duke of Devonshire noted, many of us read magazines backwards. Tottering-byGently’s good humour from a rarefied world resonates as wry comments on universal life, but, for the creator, it’s deeply personal.

Lord ‘Dicky’ Tottering is largely modelled on Annie’s father and Lady T (Daffy) partly on herself. Tottering Hall is really Broughton Hall, near Skipton in North Yorkshire, seat of the Tempests since 1097. Its recent transformation from gin palace to wellbeing sanctuary makes it ripe for fresh lampooning.

One character in this ever-evolving caricature will remain 18 forever. He is based on Annie’s son Freddy, who died from an accidental heroin overdose in 2011. COUNTRY LIFE’s resident cartoonist has not missed a single week in cheering up the nation since she arrived in 1993, but some things are no joke: the death of a child is almost beyond imagining.

In shattering depths of grief, the stricken mother picked up the pieces in plaster, ceramic, mosaic, glass-cast resin, stone and bronze, rescuing and reinventing herself as a sculptor. Ideas exploded as she grappled with the feelings she needed to express.

Now, she has found her innermost voice in quicksilver bronze portraits of conductors and dancers. More than records of performance, these abstracted figures form a salute to vitality. Capturing concentration and movement, they celebrate those moments when we are fully and fabulously alive. ‘Viewers can add their own narrative,’ she says. ‘Where have you found passion in your life that affected every fibre of your body in that electric way?’