My friend Barbara Rochester, who has died aged 69 after suffering from Churg-Strauss disease, was a painter of vibrant portraits and still lifes. She was elected to the South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts in 2006, and her early exhibits with the academy revealed her wide range: glowing Devon landscapes, modern versions of ancient tapestries and still lifes that played with perspective against colourful backgrounds that might – or might not – be a tablecloth or a wallpaper.
She was born Barbara Anczykowski, the eighth of nine children, in East Prussia during the second world war. In 1944, her family fled the Russian invasion and joined the masses of displaced people in West Germany. They spent some years in displacement camps and, their home province having been absorbed into Poland, the family eventually settled in Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia.
It was in Münster that the 19-year-old Barbara met Ralph Rochester, a British army officer. They married in 1964 and moved to England, making their home in Lympstone, east Devon, where they raised their four children.
Having grown up in destitute postwar Germany, Barbara had learned from an early age to create things for herself, and she was a skilled seamstress. In Lympstone, she quickly established herself as the dressmaker of choice among the local cognoscenti.
She had sketched portraits of her schoolmates in Münster, but it was in Devon that she graduated to oil painting. The transition to fully fledged artist started with work that, by her own description, was "domestic". Her purpose was always in the first place to beautify the family home – painting cupboards and working on ceramics or fabrics. A love of tissues and fabrics, patterns and designs, flowed into her paintings. These works, shown locally, brought Barbara's work to a wider audience and there was a waiting list for her portraits. She particularly enjoyed painting children, and there are many Lympstone locals who proudly have her portraits in their home.
She is survived by Ralph, her children, Julia, Richard, Kate and Sophie, and five grandchildren.