Pat Douthwaite often referred to herself as ‘The High Priestess of the grotesque’, which certainly says something about how she saw herself. Toby Hogarth, Douthwaite’s son.
Douthwaite’s legacy is her extraordinary work: utterly original and arresting paintings and drawings which provoke a huge variety of responses and persist in the memory – and which, like all great artworks, transcend the times in which they were made, defying any impulse to box them into an art historical cul-de-sac. The 2015/16 show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, ‘Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965’ included works of Pat Douthwaite from their permanent collection and sought to place Douthwaite’s work as one of the triumphs of the feminist art. Guy Peploe
Female – not feminine – to the core, baring teeth and claws in defence of her offspring (and by that I mean her often highly maligned paintings and drawings) she has made herself almost her sole subject, painting not as she appears in the mirror but, as it were, from the inside out, from painful first hand knowledge of her physical and psychological makeup, of her essential needs, frustrations rages and occasional ecstasies. From her work at its best emanates the essence of raw femaleness with all that implies of vulnerability, unacceptable drives and emotional demands. On Douthwaite’s stage the female appears in many guises, as victim and predator, and she understands better than most that the impressive outsize persona can hide a shrinking core of anxious, insecure humanity. Cordelia Oliver, journalist, painter and art critic (1923-2009)
Pat Douthwaite by Guy Peploe
Signed copies available – £25 + p&p
Guy Peploe, who knew the artist well, has used much primary source material and the fruits of many interviews with her friends and contemporaries to tell the story of Pat Douthwaite’s colourful life. There are many works illustrated for the first time and extensive use of photographs and archival material to do justice to an extraordinary artist who made a unique contribution to Scottish art and whose life, relationships and above all creative energy can perhaps only now be properly assessed more than fourteen years after her death.
