It was only recently that the painter, and sometime actor Beryl Fenton, who has died of a heart attack aged 82, found her poetry recognised. In 2003 Andrew Motion selected one of her verses, The Eponymous K, for the Stroke Association's Bluenose anthology, and in 2004 Mario Petrucci chose Magnetic Poem as "fridge poem" winner on Radio 3's The Verb. Then, in 2008, came the publication of her collection Dandy Lady, where she displayed an unflinching but tender irony. She stood detached from the most intimate experience, as in Before, where she speculated on how her late husband's suit matched the crematorium smoke. She was perhaps nearest in spirit to the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.

Beryl was born in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. In 1930 the family moved to Brighton and she was educated at Balfour Road, Stanford Road and Brighton intermediate schools. At 14, she was working for a milliner, and in 1942 became a Coal Board secretary in London. From 1947 to 1958 she played character roles with Reading's Pendragon (later the Everyman) repertory theatre. In 1949 she began an unhappy and shortlived marriage to a Pangbourne farmer.

By 1958 Beryl had married the artist Sam Fenton and they moved to Hove, where in 1965 their daughter Leonie was born. Three decades later she chose one of Sam's paintings for the Dandy Lady cover. At home, she continued "writing small poems and painting small pictures". Her canvases were exhibited widely, including, from the late 1960s, at the Royal Academy summer show.

Sam died in 2001. She is survived by Leonie and two grandchildren, Anna and Marcus.