St. Fergus Gallery, Wick, until 14 June 2003 then touring

'The Girl with Red Hair' by Joan Eardley (Oil on Board, 24 x 20 inches)

JOAN EARDLEY (1921-1963) was born in Warnham, Sussex. She moved to Glasgow in 1940 to enrol in the Glasgow School of Art. Winning prizes, she travelled to France and Italy on a Carnegie bursary, and began to absorb the influences of Van Gogh and others. She returned to her studio at Cochrane Street, Glasgow, and began to sketch and paint the tenement life nearby. Later, she lived and worked in Catterline, Kincardineshire. until her early death in 1963.

Her Glasgow studio in Cochrane Street became so well-known that local children came to pose for sketches and photographs. These sketches are both poignant and challenging. Children in poor and ill-fitting clothes are frozen in time, “No Mean City” seen through an artist’s eyes. Her rich seascapes inspired by Catterline sit in sharp contrast to the Glasgow work, but have the same vibrancy and defiance.

Eardley’s work suggests both the toil of slum survival and the toil of life on and by the sea. The transition from Eardley to the other section of this exhibition, “Toil: Images of Rural and Urban Working Life”, is a smooth one because the hinge is toil itself. It’s a pleasure to see Robert McGregor’s familiar “Gathering Stones” alongside Peter Howson’s more disturbing “The Noble Dosser” which could well depict the adulthood of one of Eardley’s young Glasgow subjects.

McGregor’s work is one rare example of a painting with delicate colour in an unromantic setting: three women gathering stones from a beach. Howson’s paintings bulge and threaten to burst the canvas like the Incredible Hulk, and their power is in the lurking menace of huge biceps and hands. Howson and Eardley, both shaped by the industrial centres of Central Scotland produce work that has special relevance for Highland people who know plenty about toil on land and sea.

The exhibition can be seen at the following galleries:
St. Fergus Gallery, Wick Library, until 14 June 2003.
Iona Gallery, Kingussie, 21 June – 19 July 2003.
Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, 26 July – 30 August 2003.

Admission free.

© Tom Bryan, 2003