Portrait of former headmistress Tatiana Macaire by Beka Smith

This joint exhibition of works of by John Eveleigh and Beka Smith in Folkestone runs from 4th -30th November 2011 in The Cube, Tontine Street, Folkestone as part of the Folkestone Book Festival.

Until this year, there has only been one portrait of the former Headmistresses of Ashford School, that of Miss Lilian Brake. Mike Buchanan, the present Head, is keen to have portraits of all his predecessors and commissioned Beka to paint one of Mrs Edwards (Headmistress 1910-1928), and more recently, the portrait of Mrs Macaire (1984-1992), which was unveiled at the Preview, held on 3rd November, by Peregrine Massey, Chairman of Ashford School Council.

Tatiana Macaire (née Miller) was born in 1933 on the Isle of Wight. Her doctor father was married to a White Russian who escaped from Russia at the time of the Revolution. After school at Roedean and a Classics degree at Oxford, Tatiana taught in various schools, state and independent, till meeting her husband, James, with whom she went to Nigeria, Bavaria, and Denmark before they settled in England. She has two sons, and, once they were at school, picked up her career, ending up as Head, firstly of Channing School in North London, and finally of Ashford School in Kent, where she had one year as president of the Girls' Schools Association (GSA). In retirement she enjoys her grandchildren, has continued to enjoy sailing, learnt to pick up a paintbrush, travelled widely, and discovered the reality of her Christian faith.'

Beka Smith was born in Canterbury, Kent in 1975, daughter of the international concert pianist Ronald Smith. Beka was at Ashford School from 1986-1993. After completing her GCSEs and A-levels, she went on to study at the Kent Institute of Art and Design (Maidstone) and Hastings College of Arts and Technology. She graduated from the University of the West of England (with a BA Honours degree in Art and Visual Culture) in 1998. Throughout her years of training she has counterbalanced her official design and technology-based studies with a private passion for painting, drawing and in particular portraiture.