Connie Lindqvist - Obituary Rye's artistic community joined with sailors and local fishermen to pay tribute to artist Connie Lindqvist who died last month, aged 52, after suffering a heart attack. Connie's ashes were scattered in Rye Bay after a procession of boats set sail from the Harbour, led by the Rye trawler Akela.
Born Helena Constance Elizabeth Lindqvist, in Finland, Connie moved to Rye as a teenager and worked here all her life as an artist. Biddy Cole, of Rye Pottery, paid tribute to Connie at the funeral and said:
"Her paternal grandparents were living in Russia when the revolution started in 1917, escaping on a cattle train but leaving all their belongings behind them; some of which were eventually brought to them by their Russian governess who escaped herself by walking all the way from St Petersburg pulling two sledges behind her. Connie's father, a Master Forester, and her mother, a pharmacist, were both over 40 when Connie was born. They lived in Lapland and Connie grew up knowing Father Christmas really did have reindeer! She learnt to cross country ski almost as soon as she could walk and was used to her father going hunting for elk and bears!
She was, of course, hugely talented artistically - with an abiding love for the sea and birds and an affinity with the natural world. When she was 17 she applied for Helsinki Art School and was so appalled by the communist ethos she walked out of the interview. She then persuaded her parents to help her come to Rye as an au pair. She came to Christopher and Jocelyn Rowe who at the time had three daughters. I remember Connie on her day off coming to ask if she could learn to paint tiles. She started painting bird tiles and the birds were always owls or birds of prey, the ones she knew from home. But she was a quick learner and in a very short time we were able to ask customers for a list of the birds you would like for our Finnish Paintress. She produced 200 exotic bird-tiles for a kitchen in Vienna and over 40 varieties of duck for a retired colonial officer in Jersey. At the end of that year Connie was told she had to go back to Finland - neither she nor us wanted that and so with a little help from Douglas Hurd managed to get a proper work permit.
Over the 30 years that Connie painted tiles for us she produced some beautiful decorative wall panels for stately homes, department stores and private houses. Anyone who is lucky enough to have some of Connie Lindqvist's exquisite tiles should appreciate them and care for them - her skills and talents are irreplaceable.
Connie the sailor...I remember the excitement when she finally managed to buy her first boat Will 'o the Wisp. The river and the sea seemed to be part of her. Like Ratty she believed that there was 'nothing half as much worth doing as messing about in boats'. Connie studied for and passed the most difficult navigation exams and in 1986 acquired her second boat, the 30-foot gaff-cutter Vemara. As her sailing skills developed she would take off for six to 12 weeks at a time each summer to wherever the fancy took her - Brittany, Ireland, Holland and twice memorably and very bravely back across the North Sea through the Kiel Canal & the Baltic...as far as Helsinki in 1981 and for a month's working cruise around the Baltic island of Gotland in 1998.
Her sailing life resulted in a lot more painting and the start of her literary career: illustrating firstly Rye from the Water's Edge moving on to children's books, cards and any number of special commissions, while this year she had taken over the publication of The Good Yacht Guide from Sheelagh Hoskyns.
In the last ten years her painting work grew with regular exhibitions around Rye and she took on more and more varied projects, yet despite all her commitments she always had time for her friends: she herself said she was blessed with her friends - and nothing was ever too much trouble.
Connie was one of the least materialistic people I know. She had a huge interest in and tolerance for her fellow man, never seeming malicious, just caring and concerned even if it was an inconvenience to herself.
Her natural history knowledge and learning were rewarded in 1997, to her own rather deprecating surprise, by being elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London, the oldest scientific society in the world devoted to natural history, an honour that allowed her to have the initials 'FLS' after her name.
Connie's skill and ability to interpret and adapt a vague idea in someone else's head into something of great beauty and permanence was an outstanding gift, but one she herself treated very lightly.
Her enthusiasm and love for Rye seemed to many of us to make her more of a Ryer than those claiming at least five generations of Rye breeding.
Busy and creative to the very last hours of her life, how lucky we are to have known her and to know too, that so much of her work survives her and will be valued for years to come."
Rye artist John Izod added:
"Connie was a superb artist and a generous, warm-hearted person. She will be badly missed."