Josephine Wall

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Josephine Wall (born 1947 in Farnham, Surrey) is a popular English fantasy artist and sculptor.

Educated at Farnham and Parkstone (Dorset) grammar schools, she studied fine art at Bournemouth College and worked at Poole Pottery as a designer and painter of Delphis Ware^[1]. Her pottery figures include characters from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and mythological creatures. Pieces of this work now feature in a book on the history of Poole Pottery.

Her paintings are mainly influenced and inspired by Arthur Rackham, with lesser influences from surrealist artists such as Magritte and Dalí, and the romanticism of the pre-Raphaelites.

A number of her works were exhibited in Teheran and Tokyo during 1974 and her first solo exhibition took place the following year in Swindon. Josephine and her paintings were the subject of a special feature on Southern Television in 1990. Following a visit to the Spring Fair^[2] in Birmingham in 1993 she signed contracts with firms in Britain and Switzerland to publish her work as prints, posters and cards for worldwide distribution. Her originals and limited edition prints by are often sold through Courtenay's Fine Art^[3]. In 1996 a licensing agreement with a company in Los Angeles, California, USA led to many new outlets including cards, stationery, puzzles, journals, bookplates, mugs, needlepoint kits and posters, as well as limited edition prints^[4].

In 1998 five original works were selected for an exhibition at London's Mall Gallery entitled “Art of the Imagination”. Josephine has subsequently joined the circle of artists in the society of the same name^[5].

Since then her works have been selected for exhibitions at New York Art Expo and have been the subject of a book “The Fantasy World of Josephine Wall”, jointly published by the artist and Courtyard of Romance^[6]. Pop singer Britney Spears has used a number of Josephine's images on her website. Britney also purchased a number of Limited Edition prints and Josephine is working on an original painting for her.