JOAN EARDLEY: TIME A MAJOR EXHIBITION WAS HELD

JOAN EARDLEY: TIME A MAJOR EXHIBITION WAS HELD

This is a summary of an article by Libby Brooks in The Guardian newspaper which was published on 26^th May 2020

Joan Eardley: Time a major exhibition was held

Joan Eardley’s recognition internationally was stalled by her death from breast cancer at the age of 42.  Family, friends and admirers are calling for a major exhibition as the centenary of her birth approaches.  At this challenging time for art galleries due to the COVID 19 pandemic, another particular challenge is to honour Joan Eardley in the autumn of 2021. 

The art historian Frances Spalding is quoted, referring to Joan Eardley’s ‘immersive experience of just vast waste and vast seas and vast areas of cliff at Catterline, a small village on the Kincardineshire coast’.  Frances Spalding also refers to Joan Eardley’s work done at Townhead, Glasgow.  Joan Eardley’s paintings of children in Townhead are widely celebrated.  At Catterline Joan Eardley ‘created her elemental panoramas of land and sea in thickly textured paint’.

Joan Eardley died in 1963: she had been too ill to attend her first solo exhibition in London that year.