Rosemarie Cockayne was born Rosemarie Edwina Biggers on 4 November 1943 in Montreal, Canada. Her parents were Harold Edwin Biggers (1900-1979), a barrister and political journalist from Australia, and Evelyn Linda née Cockayne (1906-1980), an English-born commercial artist who had emigrated to Australia with her mother and sister in 1913. In 1944, the Biggers family returned from Canada to London, where Rosemarie’s parents had lived for some years prior to her birth.
Rosemarie was educated at Miss Ironside’s School for Girls in Kensington, London. Her interest in the performing arts emerged at an early age. When she was seven years old, she took mime lessons with the legendary Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978), who quickly spotted Rosemarie’s aptitude for dance. She recommended her to the Polish ballet master Stanislas Idzikowski (1894-1977), and it was under his tutelage that Rosemarie took the first steps towards her future career. While continuing to study at her day school, she furthered her dance training at the Royal Ballet School. She appeared in ballet and opera productions at Covent Garden and, in 1958, was given a role as Miriam in the film Drawn from the Nile. Having left the Royal Ballet School, Rosemarie became a ballet soloist and later a ballerina at the Basle State Ballet in Switzerland under the direction of Waslaw Orlikowsky. It was at around this time that she assumed her mother’s maiden name as her stage name.
While living and working in Switzerland, Rosemarie developed an interest in painting. She adopted expressionism and its vibrant use of strong colours as her dominant style. She returned to England to study painting at Saint Martin’s School of Art and at Morley College in London. To fund her studies, she continued dancing and took up fashion modelling aided by her mother, who drew fashion illustrations for the stores in Kensington and Knightsbridge. Rosemarie held her first exhibition at Clarges Gallery, London in February 1972. For the next thirty years, she exhibited her work widely in England and internationally in Sweden, Canada, and Brazil. In addition, she produced company logos, record sleeves, and stage designs, most notably sets and costumes for Dublin City Ballet’s productions.
Later in her artistic career, Rosemarie Cockayne combined her love of art with her deep interest in people and the environment. She began to do voluntary work with children, the homeless, and the disabled as Artist in Residence for several community groups, running art workshops and sitting at committees concerned with art and education. Among the charities she collaborated with were Field Lane, The Pembroke Centre, and Providence Row. Her work with the city’s charities was honoured in 2000 with the Freedom of the City of London.
Rosemarie Cockayne died after a long illness on 3 February 2015. Her funeral was held at the church of St John the Baptist in Kensington, and her ashes interred at the church of St John the Baptist in the parish of Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire alongside her parents.
