Tony Shiels
Cornish artist and magician (1938–2024)
Anthony Nicol "Doc" Shiels (25 May 1938 – 11 July 2024) was an English-born artist, magician and writer. After attending the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London, and briefly studying at the Académie André Lhote in Paris, he moved to St Ives, Cornwall. He arrived in 1958 and stayed in the area until 1963 taking full part in that key period of British Modern Art. In 1961, following the resignation of Barbara Hepworth, he was made a member of the committee of the influential Penwith Society of Arts. In St Ives he ran the progressive 'Steps Gallery', where he showed artists like Brian Wall and Bob Law. He had several solo exhibitions in London mainly at the Rawinsky gallery just off Carnaby Street.
History
Anthony Nicol Shiels was born in Salford, England on 25 May 1938. In the late 1960s, after moving to live in Ponsanooth near Falmouth, he rediscovered stage magic - something he had been taught as a boy by his father and grandfather - and wrote articles for The Linking Ring and The Budget magazines. This included interviews with Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury. He also published a trio of magic books: 13, Something Strange and Daemons Darklings and Doppelgangers which were sold in both the UK and the US and led to him being associated with 1970s bizarre magic.
The public source identifies “Tony Shiels” as cornish artist and magician (1938–2024). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tony, Shiels and Cornish.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3531886. VIAF identifies the subject as 63880633. The Library of Congress control number is nr93023450. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 2024, 1958 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tony Shiels” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.