She first went to the University of California, Los Angeles and then moved to London in 1961 to study art at the Slade School of Fine Art. Coming from California she found the institution to be male-dominated, stuffy and conservative: “The assumption was that, as one tutor put it, the girls were there to keep the boys happy. He prefaced that by saying it wasn’t necessary for them to look at the portfolios of the female students . . . they just needed to look at their photos. From that point, it was head-on competition with the male students.” 

Haworth began experimenting with sewn and stuffed soft sculptures, making still life items as well as life-sized figures of Mae West, W.C. Fields and Shirley Temple (later to be used on the Sgt Pepper’s album cover). She soon became a leading figure of the British Pop Art movement and with Pauline Boty became one of only two recognised female practitioners in London. 

She had two solo shows at the Robert Fraser Gallery where a steady stream of pop artists were already being represented. By this time she had met and married Peter Blake. It was Robert Fraser that suggested to Paul McCartney that he should use the services of Blake and Haworth for the next Beatles album cover. The concept was to have them dressed in Northern brass band uniforms appearing at an official ceremony in a park. For the great crowd gathered at this imaginary event, they pasted life-size, black-and-white photographs of characters on to hardboard, which Haworth hand-tinted. She also added several of her Hollywood dummies and a Shirley Temple doll. Inspired by Hammersmith’s municipal flower-clock, she came up with the idea of writing out the name of the band in civic flower-bed lettering.

Haworth continues to work in a variety of media and remains a staunch advocate for feminism, especially for the representation of women in the art world.

Buy her artwork from mainstream galleries here.