My great-aunt Shirley Waine, who has died aged 93, had a short career as an art teacher before settling into married life in rural Devon, where she pursued various artistic endeavours and volunteered for organisations including the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

Shirley was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, to Ethel (nee Shaw), a shirt factory worker, and Edgar Whittles, a vegetable grower. She attended Rochdale grammar school and later teacher training college in Manchester, before gaining a post as an art teacher in Newport, south Wales. Though Shirley did not really want to be a teacher, it was the only way she could make a living from her talent as an artist. In any case, a few years after her marriage in 1957 to Noel Waine, a bridge design engineer she gave up the job.