Joan Eardley is one of Scotland’s most enduringly popular artists, best known for hauntingly powerful portraits of Glasgow street children and for highly gestural and expressive landscapes along the north-east coast of Scotland. Eardley was born on a dairy farm in Sussex, and studied art in London.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, she moved to Auchterarder and then to Glasgow, where she studied at Glasgow School of Art. After a six-month residency at Hospitalfield in Arbroath and a period travelling in Italy, Eardley returned to Scotland in 1949 and took up a studio in Townhead, Glasgow, an area marked by destruction and post-war development.
Eardley forged friendships with many of the children she painted: rag-clad figures amid urban dereliction evoked in what was becoming Eardley’s characteristically scruffy yet tender painting style. From 1952 until her death in 1963, Eardley divided her time between Glasgow and the fishing village of Catterline in north-east Scotland. There she was drawn to farmland and rugged coastlines, the suddenly shifting weather and wild seas.
Famously, whenever a storm was coming in, Eardley would receive a phone call in Glasgow, rush to the train with her scooter, and motor the last part of the journey from Whitehaven in order to immerse herself in the weather at its most dramatic. Often painting outside on hardboard and incorporating a wide range of materials, Eardley created an extraordinary body of work. Her paintings remain much-loved for their expressive energy, texture and deep sense of place.
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