“Conversations with Joan” – Kate Downie
Date: November 7th 2024
Time: 6.30pm – 8pm
Place: Edinburgh College of Art/TBA
Drawn to the possibilities left open by Joan Eardley’s last, incomplete, painting Two Children (1962), artist Kate Downie is debuting her recreated and completed version of Eardley’s iconic painting alongside other new works that explore childhood, sibling relationships, care and creativity. Downie will discuss her experience of this process in the Memorial Lecture.
Kate Downie RSA (born 1958)
Born in America of British parentage, Kate returned to live in the North East of Scotland and studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. Described as ‘one of the most subtle and persuasive colourists of her generation’ and as a ‘supreme draughtswoman’ she has enjoyed a long career of travel and foreign residences. She served as President of the Society of Scottish Artist from 2004 to 2006 and was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2008. Her work appears in many public and corporate collections including the BBC, Adam & Co, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Aberdeen Art Gallery, City of Edinburgh Council, Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, New Hall College Art Collection in Cambridge and HM The Queen.
In 2021 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 like 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.