Sculptor and painter. Born in Salisbury (Wiltshire), he studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol, under Paul Feiler and Ernest Pascoe, then Exeter College of Art and Design (1954–60) under Edward Atkinson. Having confined himself almost exclusively to painting during the 1950s, in the 1960s he switched to sculpture. In 1962 he won first prize in an exhibition held in Gloucester entitled ’19 Young Sculptors’. He went on to teach sculpture at Exeter College of Art and Design, where, between 1971 and 1991, he was successively head of art and principal. From the mid-1960s, his work was predominantly abstract, and much of it conceived in relation to an architectural context. He had solo shows at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (1963), at the Alwin Gallery (1976) and at the Royal West of England Academy (1981). Public commissions include Looking Forward, for Exeter City Sculpture, to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977; a bronze fountain sculpture for the head office of Mazda Cars in Tunbridge Wells (1982); and Planned Growth, a bronze relief over the entrance to Rowan House, Greycoat Street, Westminster (1986–87), which was awarded the Royal Society of British Sculptors’ silver medal in 1987. Thursby was a member of the Royal West of England Academy (president, 1995–2000), and, from 1983, a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. He died on 6 January 2011.
Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; The Guardian (online edn), 20 February 2011 (obituary); F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 45, 376; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 39, 50.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011; revised, Terry Cavanagh, January 2025