Sunday 9 April 2017

Scottish Artist Joan Ardley


Exhibitor Museum of Modern art Edinburgh

Ardley developed a special understanding of children in poverty in Townhead tenement streets of Glasgow.  
She built up her images with layers of colour – in oils, watercolour and pastels.  Later she lived in a cottage in Catterline – on the east coast south of Aberdeen..  Some of her later images display more depth. 

An exhibition worth visiting.


 
One of the pre-eminent British artists of the 20th Century”
The Times 
Joan Eardley’s career lasted barely fifteen years: she died in 1963, aged just forty-two. During that time she concentrated on two very different themes: the extraordinarily candid paintings of children in the Townhead area of Glasgow; and paintings of the fishing village of Catterline, just south of Aberdeen, with its leaden skies and wild sea. These two contrasting strands are the focus of this exhibition, which looks in detail at her working process. It draws on a remarkable archive of sketches and photographs which remains largely unknown and unpublished.
The exhibition also features many loans from public and private collections, allowing the viewer to trace specific developments between the photographs, the drawings and the finished paintings.
Image: Joan Eardley, Children and Chalked Wall 2,  1963
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal © Estate of Joan Eardley. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2016