My spouse, Joanna Barfield, who has died aged 63 of most cancers, was a preferred Suffolk trainer and energetic in native artwork and music circles.
Joanna was head of recent international languages at Stradbroke Highschool within the Nineties earlier than working at Halesworth Center and Worlingham Center faculties for a few years as an English and meals expertise trainer. After the closure in 2012 of the center faculties in Suffolk, Joanna labored as a provide trainer and was well-known in native main faculties.
Joanna was born at Nocton Corridor, an RAF station in Lincolnshire, to Ida (nee Saunders), a nurse, and David Barfield, an RAF regiment policeman. She spent a few of her childhood in Kenya, Singapore and Italy together with her three older brothers earlier than state boarding college at Wymondham school, Norfolk. Joanna studied French and German at King’s Faculty London and skilled as a trainer at Trinity Corridor, Cambridge.
She started her instructing profession at Bancroft’s college in Woodford Inexperienced, east London, after which labored for 2 years within the classical music enterprise in London earlier than shifting again within the early Nineties to East Anglia, the place she and I met at an artwork gallery in Harleston, which was exhibiting a few of my woodcut prints.
Joanna sang with the Harleston choral society in addition to singing solo and in duets with mates in recitals in church buildings and halls. A widely known face within the native artwork group – a trendy determine together with her lengthy crimson pre-Raphaelite hair – she stewarded within the Halesworth Gallery, the place she was a serene presence at personal views.
We collaborated on a sequence of large-scale artwork occasions and exhibitions in Suffolk, which befell in galleries, store home windows, fields and marshes. Joanna beloved her backyard and her many cats. She was a loyal reader of the Guardian newspaper who solely just lately transformed to studying on-line.
After her analysis of womb most cancers, Joanna bore her closing sickness bravely. Final yr, she and I celebrated our 32-year lengthy relationship with a marriage. She is survived by me, and by her father, her brothers, Richard, Steve and Nick, and her stepson, Ben.
