As an art teacher at South Hampstead high school, Audrey Walker made the studio the most popular place in the building – and what a studio, originally constructed for the Victorian painter Sir Ernest Waterlow, with huge north-facing windows. But my favourite memory of her involved a degree of terror.
My three best friends and I dared to cut school to visit the Young Contemporaries exhibition at the RBA galleries in Suffolk St (we had no idea of course that Audrey was involved in any way).
As we strolled back across Soho Square, whom should we encounter crossing the grass but Miss Walker. Obviously, she was reproachful – but making us promise not to play truant ever again, she agreed not to say a word back at the school.
