Cherry Ann Crowley

About Cherry

Cherry Hagues was born on September 26^th, 1930 in Leeds, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, the eldest daughter of 3 children to George and Ann Hagues. George Hagues was a talented chemist who had grown up in extremely harsh conditions in Hull, Yorkshire.  George worked for Tetley’s Brewery in Leeds.  The family lived in the Beckett Park area of the city and she attended Leeds Girls Modern School where she soon showed a talent for art and fashion, and she went on to study Fashion Design at Leeds College of Art, gaining a Diploma. Whilst at the college her contemporaries were artists and musicians such as Diz Disley, Frankie Vaughn and the Temperance Seven Jazz ensemble.

Cherry met her husband of more than 63 years, Frank, as a teenage attendee at the local Methodist Church. After Frank had completed his degree at Leeds University in Civil Engineering, newly married in 1953, they embarked for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Frank would work for 3 years as a Crown Agent instead of completing 2 years National Service. Cherry turned down a full scholarship that had been offered to her to attend the Royal Academy of Art in London, but she never regretted her decision to go to Malaysia.  Frank and Cherry stayed for 11 years in Malaysia, and she started to paint with oils in Kuala Lumpur, while Frank was kept busy keeping the water supply safe due to the communist incursion at that time ( – an achievement that earned him an O.B.E. [Officer of the Order of the British Empire]). Aside from teaching in the local primary school, Cherry attended painting classes in Kuala Lumpur that were run by the noted portrait painter Mohammed Hossein Enas (1924-1995), and her paintings from this time show an artist honing her craft.

Returning to Leicester, her second child Rebecca was born in 1965; whereupon the family moving between London and then York soon thereafter. In York, Cherry started doing more art again, experimenting with plastic abstract designs, molds and pottery as part of art classes that she took. After moving to the Twickenham area in 1972, Cherry returned to oil and pastel painting, and did several courses at the St. Martin School of Art, drawing Chrissie Hynde (later of the Pretenders fame, who did part time work as a model) on several occasions. This is perhaps the most prolific period for her, with many paintings showing the beautiful scenery around the River Thames, a theme that she returned to on many occasions.

The family moved to Goring in 1988, and Cherry continued to paint the Thames but now extended her subject matter to exhibited locally in Goring, had paintings accepted for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, and paintings exhibited on several occasions in the New English Art Club exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

Many of her works of art feature the local scenery and she also did numerous portrait paintings, many in oil but also many in pastels and watercolours. She was a member of the Goring Art Group, and took numerous courses and workshops with British artists such as Tom Coates and Sherree Valentine Daines.

Late in life, Cherry had a long 15-month battle with oesophageal cancer, and despite her fighting spirit to overcome it, she passed away on March 11th, 2016. She has left a large number of art works and sketches for others to appreciate and enjoy, and we hope you enjoy what you see on this website.