Catterline is a small coastal village, on the Aberdeenshire coast of the North Sea. During a 1951 exhibition of her work at Aberdeen’s Gaumont Cinema, artist Joan Eardley (1921-1963) contracted the mumps. While she was recovering, a close friend took her on a drive to Catterline, where they discovered a remote two-room building on a cliff top was for sale. This was the Watchie, a simple space that became Eardley’s studio in 1952.
For the rest of her life, Eardley returned to Catterline often, buying a cottage of her own in 1955. She became very attached to the local community, and to the countryside around the village, saying: ‘I do feel the more you know something the more you can get out of it – the more it gives you’.
In this film, local Catterline resident Ron Stephen, and former Curator Fiona Pearson discuss Eardley’s relationship with the village.
