Unseen work by Virgin's Scarlet Lady artist on show

Previously unseen works by the artist who created the Scarlet Lady depicted on Virgin Atlantic planes, as well as other murals for the company, are on display.

Ken White, from Swindon, died in December 2025 but had been organising the exhibition in Marlborough, Wiltshire, before his death.

The show at The Little Gallery now has input from his children, who have put the last piece he was painting in there, although it is not known if it is finished.

His son Asa White said he was going through the attic, finding work that would likely never have been seen in public before.

Virgin boss Richard Branson called White "one of the most extraordinary creatives of our time", explaining that he had painted for record shops, recording studios, hotels and airport lounges, as well as the planes.

White hand-painted the first few Scarlet Lady images onto the planes.

The last painting was sitting near a chest of drawers where he would keep his supplies, but the top was used as his palette, which he never scraped the paint from. The paint built up on there is a few inches thick after decades of use.

White was well-known around Swindon, particularly for his local murals. A lot of the time his subjects involved local people and places. He started off working as a sign painter for Great Western Railway.

"Walking around Swindon, he was always getting stopped and people were saying 'hello, Ken', wanting to speak to him," said Asa.

"He always shied away from the term artist and if he was asked if he was an artist he would just say 'no I'm a painter'. He was very humble and very modest."

However, his work, which included painting adverts for musicians, linked him with a number of famous names, including Mike Oldfield, XTC and the Sex Pistols.

"You'd go to parties with him and he would know lots of famous people because he worked in recording studios a lot," said Asa.

"You'd mention someone famous and [he'd] say, oh, I met them. It almost became like a running joke that anyone you mention is famous, dad's met them."

Many of the works at The Little Gallery in Marlborough are for sale and reflect White's roots in Swindon, but there are also some showing a more pop art style and his interest in topics like animal testing.

A few are not for sale - the family have each chosen a few favourites to keep. One of them is a large painting of the Beatles in a nude style.

Antiques Roadshow expert Grant Ford, who owns the gallery, said: "[White] was a local man that deserves more recognition as a British artist.

"From my perspective, as someone who's been in the art world for a long, long time, I think his work needs to be appreciated by a much broader audience."

Ford called White's Swindon murals "iconic statements for the town".

"He was kind of before a number of those significant graffiti pop artists that did graffiti art in our cities. So he's quite advanced ahead of that game."

He is expecting the works to sell from £100 up to £15,000.

The exhibition runs until 12 August.

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