WHEN New Forest artist Linda Fredericks received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal she decided to throw a party with a difference – by literally making an exhibition of herself.

And because of her dislike of churches “and all their connotations” this retrospective exhibition of her life’s work will be a moving but joyful replacement for her own wake. Her final ‘swansong’, it will be an opportunity to celebrate her life as an artist, teacher and arts producer while she is still very much alive.

It is all the more special as it takes place at ArtSway in June – the gallery she established to encourage contemporary community art in the heart of the New Forest some 20 years ago.

A mother of three and grandmother of six, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago but after the disease spread was told a year ago there would be no cure. In January this year doctors told her she only had a few weeks to live but might extend that with chemotherapy.

When we meet at her stunning home in Sway village centre she tells me the chemo is making her thoughts a little foggy and the cancer is affecting her walking but she talks enthusiastically about this final project.

Called ‘Making an Exhibition of Myself’ it will span more than 40 years of work created in the Forest.

Linda’s husband David asked her how she wanted to be remembered after attending the funeral of a colleague’s wife who shockingly died within six weeks of a cancer diagnosis.

“I decided we needed to discuss this as I don’t want to be left with a blank sheet of paper,” he said.

Linda, 76, explained: “I don’t want to have anything in a church with all their connotations and I’m not religious. The New Forest isn’t blessed with millions of beautiful architectural buildings but I thought the ArtSway gallery that I founded is a beautiful building and the architect who designed it – Tony Fretton, has an international reputation. It’s a great place to have whatever you have.

“So I thought maybe I should have an exhibition that will combine my jobs: me as an artist, an educator and also as an arts producer. It would be a nice way of rounding things off I think to have a good party.”

The ‘party’ will be at the private view on June 3 for family, friends and colleagues. The exhibition will be open to the public for 11 days from June 4.

“The exhibition will start with childhood and have seven elements as man has seven phases in life: some people don’t even get 70 years,”said Linda.

Linda reluctantly moved from London to the New Forest with her first husband and children in 1973 but the marriage soon broke up and she found herself a single mother to the three girls living in a caravan. Realising she had to make things happen for herself, she carved out a fulfilling creative life as an artist and teacher and was head of art at Arnewood School for nine years.

She recalls: “My ex-husband was a forester. I didn’t want to come here because it’s an absolute outback and very different to London – and now. I was a socialist and very active politically – I was building a revolutionary party.When I came down here I found the isolation very difficult.”

Money was short too.

“If you are a revolutionary you give all your money to the party. We didn’t have any money. It was the late ’60s/early ’70s and there was lots of poverty. We spent a year living in caravan at Sandy Balls with no toilet and cold water, in the residents’ area – it was primitive in the extreme but my children remember it with such joy. We would go logging and get sticks and twigs for the fire. They remember it as a great adventure and that’s what I tried to make it. “

Luckily they managed to get social housing in Sway in a house that was awaiting development by the council and today Linda lives in a complex built on the same site.

“I’ve been living on this plot since 1975 but the house has expanded and developed as my life has changed. “

Taking early retirement from teaching in 1992, Linda founded ArtSway, the first space for contemporary visual arts to have been created in the Forest.

She rented part of the old Forest Heath pub and created a studio and the idea of ArtSway started to develop.

“Over a period of six years I managed to raise the money and get together a team and, 20 years ago, it became one of the first National Lottery funded programmes. “

Linda was introduced to the distinguished English architect Tony Fretton who she commissioned to convert a former stable block in Station Road into a modernist gallery and studios. From its opening in 1997 ArtSway went on to show the work of many national and international artists.

“I always did collaborations with others and out of that comes such a richness because everyone contributes.”

But how does it feel to be staging a ‘final exhibition ‘ like this?

“It has been a very life-affirming experience. I started it in January. I went to see one of the trustees of ArtSway and asked if I could have a gallery. He’s a doctor and said to me, ‘Your cancer is very aggressive so take the first available date (in June)’ and that was quite a shock, and I found out that if I didn’t go through chemotherapy I wouldn’t last more than two months. The really shocking thing is the trustee who said this to me a month ago dropped dead of a heart attack – and he’d shown no sign of illness.

"That was extraordinary and there was him encouraging me to go for this.

"None of us really know how long we have.”

Collating the exhibition hasn’t been too difficult as she re-discovered paintings and drawings in the attic she hasn’t looked at in years: “I got everything that has been archived through my life. You keep things because materialism is part of our lives and then the show begins to show itself to me and to tell me what it wanted to be, so it is a retrospective of an art practitioner.

“Part of it was done in education, encouraging others, and part of it is as a producer making new projects happen and that’s the life of many people in the arts.

“We don’t just work as an individual; we work in collaboration with communities. For a long time community art was considered amateurish and not of any value artistically but I think those attitudes have changed a lot. The quality and professionalism is the same.”

Knowing her life is limited Linda is savouring and embracing every day:

“I’ve known for over a year that it couldn’t be cured and at the end of January I knew there was not much time. Everyone is different though. Your body sets it (the cancer) up and your cancer is truly individual and we all respond differently to treatment. It’s possible this treatment could go on for for one or two years. All I can say is by facing death you really do learn how to live because you don’t throw away time; you use it valuably each day. You try to make the most of every day you’ve got and I’ve taken a great deal of my family’s energy and time and they’ve been enormously generous.”

All three of Linda’s daughters, Sadie, Lucy and Jessie, are playing a key part in the exhibition along with Judy Adam the freelance curator.

“Their generosity has bee absolutely remarkable and we have worked as a collaborative team. We’ve all worked hard and hope it will be a stonking exhibition.”

Asked is it’s a blessing or a curse to know you have a certain amount of time to live she says:

“It’s an incredible luxury. None of us know when we are going to die so it’s a luxury as I’m not in any pain. There are people in pain who might not want to live a long time but these days you can pretty much manage pain – you don’t have to die in pain.”

Now as she looks forward to the exhibition Linda admits “I feel nervous! I feel very exposed because I have opened up a whole 40 years. I just hope people will find things of interest and fascination.”

The exhibition will also be a reflection of Linda’s passionate belief in opening access to the world of contemporary art to people of all ages and backgrounds. It will show paintings and drawings made by Linda in the early 1970s (most have never been shown in public), documentary videos and photographs of her performance work with young people in the area in the 1980s as a theatre and dance producer, and more recent time-based photographic and video work undertaken in London and at her home in Sway from the mid-2000s.

Making an Exhibition of Myself is a powerful story of one individual’s lifelong commitment to the practice and facilitation of the arts, showing how a window to an international world of ideas and practice could be created in a small New Forest village.

The exhibition opens to the public daily on Sunday 4 June 2-7pm and runs until Wednesday June 14.