Joan Eardley
Fiona Pearson
Only in an occasional Goya do I remember the translation of small children into paint mixed so inseparably with warmhearted self-identification with the inner life of the child. And only in Turner’s sea paintings does one find oneself so involved with the skies and winds that hang over the uneasy tumult of the waves.
So wrote Eric Newton, the art critic of The Guardian, in his 1963 review of Joan Eardley’s last London exhibition. Less than a month later, Joan Eardley’s untimely death as she was reaching the height of her powers meant that she was denied general acceptance as a major British artist.
Eardley’s childhood images, which depict the lost tenement communities of Glasgow, and her powerful images of Catterline in the north-east of Scotland have made her one of Scotland’s best loved artists. She is cherished as a painter of the Scottish identity in both town and country, with a unique ability to sum up a community and the timeless drama of the natural world.
This book, which will accompany a major retrospective exhibition being held in Edinburgh, will be the first in nearly twenty years to re-examine Eardley in both a national and international context.
£9.95