man in the window collage artwork by lewis

She developed a signature Pop style and iconography. Career īoty was at her most productive two years after graduating from college. She was also an active participant in Anti-Ugly Action, a group of RCA students involved in the stained glass, and later architecture, courses who protested against new British architecture that they considered offensive and of poor quality. She sang, danced, and acted in risqué college reviews, published her poetry in an alternative student magazine, and was a knowledgeable presence in the film society where she developed her interest, especially in European new wave cinema. While at the Royal College of Art, Boty engaged in a number of extracurricular activities. During this time she also became friends with other emerging Pop artists, such as David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Peter Phillips and Peter Blake. Boty continued to paint on her own in her student flat in west London and in 1959 she had three more works selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition.

Despite the institutionalised sexism at her college, Boty was one of the stronger students in her class, and in 1960 one of her stained-glass works was included in the travelling exhibition Modern Stained Glass organised by the Arts Council. She had wanted to attend the School of Painting, but was dissuaded from applying as admission rates for women were much lower in that department. She studied at the School of Stained Glass at the Royal College of Art (1958–61). In 1957 one of her pieces was shown at the Young Contemporaries exhibition alongside work by Robyn Denny, Richard Smith and Bridget Riley. Her work showed an interest in popular culture early on. Encouraged by her tutor Charles Carey to explore collage techniques, Boty's painting became more experimental. Her schoolmates called her 'The Wimbledon Bardot' on account of her resemblance to the French film star Brigitte Bardot. Boty earned an Intermediate diploma in lithography (1956) and a National Diploma in Design in stained glass (1958). Boty's mother, on the other hand, was supportive, having herself been a frustrated artist and denied parental permission to attend the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1954 she won a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art, which she attended despite her father's disapproval. The youngest of four children, she had three older brothers and a stern father who made her keenly aware of her position as a girl. Pauline Veronica Boty was born in suburban south London in 1938 into a middle-class, Catholic family.

Man in the window collage artwork by lewis