Life Stories with Gym Halama

Gym Halama’s life story is fascinating. Her father was British and her mother Polish, and her early years were spent in London, educated at the French Lycée school. At the age of 8, Gym found her mother’s dead body and this, clearly, had a profound effect on family life. After 3 months at Art School, which Gym found to be stuffy, a career in art and fashion followed boosted by the opportunities that presented themselves on Chelsea’s Kings Road at the time of the sexual revolution. Gym found herself working for Keith Richards and Anita Palenberg until the latter sacked her for no apparent reason. Working for the fashion designer Alice Pollock resulted in Gym becoming a model and being asked to take part in a raunchy film interpretation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Gym’s primary career is as a film set painter and her work has taken her around the world. Never one to follow an orthodox path, Gym’s life to date has been full of highs and lows, adventures,  brushes with danger and homelessness and finding herself an accidental fugitive, holed up in rural Wales with a new baby.

After years of living in London, Spain is the place where Gym has found her true home and she now continues to work from her studio in the beautiful Lecrin Valley, Granada. 

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