My mother, Janet Stowell, who has died aged 88, was a trained artist. She also worked as a designer before turning to producing linocut designs as a sideline while raising her family. Later came weaving and teaching tai chi.
Janet was born in Didsbury, Manchester, as the youngest of the four children of Gordon Medcalf and his wife, Cecilia (nee Bool), but grew up in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, where her father ran a printing company. Independent and self-reliant from an early age, Janet was 13 when her mother died and her elder siblings left home. She learned to be happy in her own company, drawing and enjoying the freedom of horse riding in the Chiltern hills.
After attending Tudor Hall school in Oxfordshire as a boarder, she went to High Wycombe Art School for a foundation year, followed by three years at the Central School of Art and Design in London to study illustration and graphics.
While working as a designer for the Gas Board, where she demonstrated her talent for modern typography and illustration, she met Gordon Stowell, an illustrator and cartoonist. She worked with Gordon in his studio for three years before they were married in 1963, after which she raised their two children, Ingrid and me, in Hampton Hill, south-west London.
During the 1970s and 80s, while looking after the family, Janet produced hundreds of linocut designs, hand-printed on a small Albion press. She sold her cards and pictures at local craft markets and then ran a successful stall in Covent Garden market in London. She also learned to weave, specialising in tapestry techniques. Although she never made a full-time living from her work, the extra income gave her a level of independence that enabled her to develop new avenues.
One of those was tai chi, which she started to learn in 1975 with Gerda Geddes, who had introduced the martial art to the UK. In 1985 she began teaching her own classes and volunteered as a tutor in tai chi and qigong (a related breathing and movement exercise) at the West Middlesex hospital cancer support centre.
Janet and Gordon were converts to healthy living, natural medicine and vegetarianism, with their allotment providing food for the family. Over the years they both volunteered with local charities, art groups and community projects.
After Gordon died in 2003, Janet moved to Frome, Somerset, to be closer to her daughters and her elder sister Eila.
A woman with a calm, gentle and kind nature, she transformed her garden in Frome with colourful borders and imaginative planting. It became a haven for her, especially during the Covid-19 lockdowns, until she moved into a care home in 2022 after developing dementia.
She is survived by Ingrid and me and by two grandchildren, Finlay and Ellie.
