Telfer Stokes was born in St Ives Cornwall in 1940 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Having won a Beckman Fellowship to Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York in 1962 he then spent nine months at the heart of the NY art scene before returning to London to exhibit paintings and to teach drawing and painting.
1971 was a defining year: following a disappointing exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, he returned to New York with Martin Attwood and it was during that visit that the idea of "making a book" came about. On returning to London he established the imprint Weproductions and went on to publish his first thee books. 1974 marked the beginning of his collaboration with Helen Douglas, and together they moved from London to Deuchar Mill in the Scottish borders. Between 1972 and 2002, Telfer published nineteen books. Seven of these books were printed at the Mill on his own presses and three at artists' book print works in the USA.
In 2004 he left the Mill and moved to Suffolk where his mother, the artist Margaret Mellis, needed help, and he started making metal sculptural objects. These were first shown at Kettle's Yard Open in Cambridge in 2008. Telfer continues to collect the material to make his sculptures and travels to his workshop in Lowestoft more or less every day.
North House Gallery 2010 & 2013.
Austin/Desmond Fine Art 2015.
Nunns Yard Gallery 2016.
The Redfern Gallery 2018 & 2021.
Email: info AT telferstokes DOT com