December 2025 / January 2026
This issue’s stunning cover is the work of illustrator Terry Whitworth, who is well known in Bridport for his images of the town’s buildings.
We caught up with Terry to find out about his life, career and inspirations…
The Bridge: Terry, thank you so much for letting us use your image of a wintry Mountfield. What medium did you use to create it?
Terry Whitworth: I sketched this one on my iPad using the ProCreate app. I use this for some of my work these days. At the beginning of my career there were no computers; sketching was ‘analogue’ and design was craft-based work with magic markers, paste-up and large drawing boards. It all started to change in the 90s with computer-aided design, and now we have tablets – it’s the same technique and thought process but with electronic pens.
TB: So you’ve kept up with advances in technology? It’s a fast-moving field.
TW: I’ve learnt what I’ve needed to learn to keep up with the changes. My wife, Lenschen, is more tech-minded than I am and she has been invaluable in so many aspects of our business. I still love to paint with traditional media, of course, but the iPad is so convenient sometimes.
TB: You’re well known for your ‘Saturday Sketchbook’ on Facebook, where you post images of local sights. Do you have any favourites among Bridport’s many buildings?
TW: I love the 17th-century Beach & Company chemists opposite the Town Hall – it’s now the Cancer Research shop. I also really like the Beach & Barnicott, just round the corner in South Street. There are so many fascinating buildings in the town that it’s hard to choose; Bridport is full of hidden gems – many are not dramatic but are definitely worth looking at more closely and learning about.
TB: How long have you lived in Bridport?
TW: I was born and brought up in the Woking area and later moved to East Molesey, near Kingston. I trained at Twickenham Art College, where I met my first wife, and after having our two sons we decided to move somewhere more rural. I’d visited Dorset in my teens and knew it was a lovely county. We looked for the right house and found it in Bradpole.
My first marriage ended after eight years and I met Lenschen. We’ve been together for 30 years now. She used to be a milliner and she’s very creative. We moved to North Mills nine years ago.
TB: Yours is a creative household! Tell us a bit about your career. How did you get started in the art world?
TW: I had a bit of a false start! I went to an academic boys’ grammar school where the creative arts were discouraged, and I started my working life in business with Plessey Radar. But I knew deep down I had to get into art and design. In my early 20s I went to college to study art, design and illustration. It was the right course of action and it opened up all sorts of possibilities for me.
TB: It must have been a huge relief to be doing something you loved. Where did you go from there?
TW: After college I worked in two or three design studios in London, then went freelance after moving down here. I continued to get the same sort of work – a mix of graphic design and illustration – but as time went on I got more and more illustration work, which I prefer. The publisher Salmon produced lots of greetings cards and calendars of my designs, which led to lots of good illustration jobs. I got a lot of work from the building sector, for estate agents and architects, creating ‘artist’s impressions’, bringing things to life.
TB: Have you had any high-profile clients?
TW: Well in 2008/9 I illustrated some of the design proposals for the grounds at Dumfries House for the then Prince of Wales, now the King. Before that I’d been commissioned to paint a watercolour of The Prince of Wales School in Poundbury. I got to meet him at the presentation ceremony, and we had a chat. Of course he’s a pretty good painter himself!
TB: Which other artists do you find inspiring?
TW: I particularly enjoy the work of other contemporary illustrators such as David Gentleman, who has a wonderful technique, and Hugh Casson, and I like David Hockney too. My own style of work might subconsciously include elements of other illustrators’ techniques. Illustration has always been more interesting to me than fine art. I love the sketching process, the sponteneity of it.
TB: How do you feel about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its ability to create art?
TW: It worries me a bit. It’s amazing what it can do, and it will obviously do good in many different fields, but in creative fields I can see that it can cause a lot of problems. We’ll have to wait and see.
The act, the process of creating art – the looking, seeing and studying – is to my mind more important than always having to get a good result. I think the process of drawing is innate in everyone – we’d all like to do it, and I’d like it to be regarded like reading, something we can all do and learn from. I’ve taught drawing to adults in art groups and it’s astonishing how many say they were told at school that they weren’t good enough.
TB: What do you enjoy besides art?
TW: I love music – in fact, it’s almost more important to me than art, and so inspiring. I love blues, folk, country and classical. I play piano and guitar a bit and used to play drums in a blues band up in Surrey. In fact, for a while the guitarist was Eddie Clark, who went on to play in Motörhead. He was only 16 at the time but was a great guitarist even then.
I also enjoy gardening, table tennis and natural history, particularly butterflies and moths.
I’m also fortunate to have a wonderful family. Sadly my younger son Kieran died in 2016 from cancer at the age of 33, but my other son Alex is also an illustrator and has a son of his own, Kit, who’s four and loves drawing so maybe he’ll follow the same path. It definitely runs in the family!
Lenschen’s two children, Jack and Alice, live in Bridport with their partners and our two wonderful granddaughters. It’s a joy to have them all around.
Terry posts a new picture from his Saturday Sketchbook every week in the Bridport Banter group on Facebook.