Glasgow Women’s Library, 23 Landressy Street, Glasgow, G40 1BP
The exhibition runs from 12 September 2024 – 25 January 2025.
Entry to the exhibition is free, all welcome.
Four Children 1962 to 2022 By Kate Downie (after Joan Eardley)
In 2021 Fife based painter-printmaker Kate Downie embarked on a project to ‘finish’ Joan Eardley’s Two Children (1962–63), a painting left unfinished on Eardley’s easel in her Townhead studio following her untimely death from breast cancer at the age of 42 in 1963.
Throughout the process, Downie felt she was engaging ‘in conversation’ with Eardley, building a strong emotional connection as she tried to figure out how the painting would have been finished. Collaborating with a dead artist is not easy, but ‘Two Children’ in its unfinished state was a blueprint of intention and a masterplan of painterly innovation in 1962.
Drawn to the possibilities left open by ‘Two Children’, Downie has created two new paintings: one in which she ‘finished’ the painting in her way, the other a new major banner painting ‘Dead or Alive’, co-created with ten local children aged between one and twelve, incorporating their marks with hers. It reflects her continuing interest in childhood sibling relationships, the role of children, their creative output, and the impact of Joan Eardley’s art and her own.
Visitors to the exhibition can expect to see Four Children, 1962 – 2022 by Kate Downie (after Joan Eardley) which is on loan from Glasgow Museums and on public display for the very first time, a large banner painting titled Dead or Alive (Conversations with Joan), 2023 – 2024, alongside sixteen other artworks. The exhibition will take you with Downie as she documents her journey, sharing her insights and discoveries as she looks, thinks, draws and paints to better understand Eardley and her final ambitious canvas.
Downie approached the task of ‘finishing’ Eardley’s work in a forensic, scientific manner – attempting to get ‘under the skin’ of the late artist. She was conscious of staying faithful to, and respectful of Eardley, whilst at the same time, making the work her own, updating the piece for the 21st century.
The original (unfinished) painting features foil sweetie wrappers and newspaper cuttings to represent the flotsam and jetsam of Glasgow street life. Downie’s version includes the silver Dr Martens and red Wellington boots worn by her young models, includes several contemporary objects in the pram such as a flat-screen TV and anglepoise lamp, and incorporated collaged scraps of newspaper centred around Cop26, which was just beginning as she started work on the painting – all of these additions bringing the work up to date.
In journeying with Joan through these works Kate describes a growing intimacy with the late artist that sees her involved in a daily internal dialogue that led to the exhibition title.
Her studio was busy with neighbour’s children, Eardley experts, young mums, tea and biscuits. The people she has invited bring their different knowledge to what they see of Eardley’s last work. This collective, deep looking and sharing brings the painting to life, with young mum Sally being the first to spot a baby’s hand in the mouth of the girl, Ann Samson, whose hip is thrust out to carry the weight. Later, as Kate’s study of the work continues a third child emerges, from a toddler-shaped gap below the girl’s waistline.
Kate has long acknowledged Eardley’s creative influence. In her work, she tackles themes similar to Eardley – the urban landscape (with Eardley capturing life close to our home in the East End of Glasgow), coastal terrain, and child portraiture. There is a sense of connection between the two painters, 60 years apart, an understanding in Downie’s artistic practice that has deepened through the creation of these new works, acknowledging Eardley’s influence and retelling stories of care that carry over time.
At the beginning of the process, Kate considered ‘completing’ the painting as an act of keeping Eardley alive but, by the final brushstrokes, it became clear that it was more about laying her to rest.
Kate said: “As the project develops, I realise that I cannot keep Joan alive, or paint as if she had lived to a ‘ripe old age’, because quite simply, she did not. All I have done is symbolically give her a few more months of good health to finish it. Finding that I can’t keep her alive, it seems instead that as I paint, I am laying her to rest.”
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