AN accomplished artist and campaigner of needy causes from Wyre Piddle has died, aged 94.

Pat Pearce lived in the village for the past 25 years after giving most of her life to promoting the arts in Zimbabwe.

In 1945 she and her husband made their home at Brakenhills in the Nyanga mountains, where they farmed.

From the 1960s she promoted the indigenous crafts of the area helping villagers make a living.

Her most enduring legacy was supporting early soapstone sculptors.

With Frank McEwan, director of the National Gallery in Salisbury, Pat and her daughters contributed to the birth of Shona sculpture and the workshop school, bringing the work of Joram Mariga, Bernard Manyondoro and others to international attention.

While in Nyanga, Pat set up a Well Baby clinic, an early innovation, together with her support of a Red Cross primary healthcare training initiative.

Following her opposition to the Ian Smith regime in 1965 which saw white voters in the African colony of Rhodesia back the then

Prime Minister to claim independence from the UK which led to her arrest in 1970 and being forced into exile.

Pat spent her days in Wyre Piddle while continuing to develop as a watercolour artist. In 1997 she returned to Nyanga and became involved in Aids awareness schemes and helped finance a pre-school for Aids orphans.

After the 2000 election, she photographed the ruling party's destruction of homes and workshops doing this on foot at great risk to herself.

Winning a national landscape award at 92, for artists over 60, she was still displaying her work last year.

Pat's dedication to the people of Zimbabwe was admired by family and friends and is remembered as a 'formidable woman, never afraid to speak her mind'.

She is survived by three children, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.