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signed lower right
printed by Peacock Visual Arts, edition 2 of 20
Pat Douthwaite had been a controversial figure on the Scottish Art Scene for more than thirty years before she came to Peacock in the late 1980s to produce a suite of lithographs. Originally studying movement, mime, and dance with Margaret Morris, she was encouraged to paint by Morris’s husband, J.D. Ferguson. She came to work on the Apples Kabuki suite of lithographs during 1988. These very graphic prints influenced by traditional Japanese theatre hark back to Douthwaite’s own dance training and the works capture the state of exaggerated costume and extreme theatre. The suite travels from very calm, beautiful portraits of kimono-clad women playing tennis to powerful, quite gruesome images of skulls and scarred victims, all resplendent in patterned finery and accompanied by birds and small cat-like animals. Recognised as the most complex of processes, the lithographs were made by the artist drawing directly onto a stone with a greasy crayon and wash.
Pat Douthwaite was born in Glasgow in 1934. She studied mime and modern dance with Margaret Morris, whose husband, J. D. Fergusson, encouraged her to paint. This important influence apart, she was self-taught. In 1958 Pat lived in Suffolk with a group of painters, including the Scots Colquhoun and MacBryde, and William Crozier. From 1959-1988 she travelled widely, to N. Africa, India, Peru, Venezuela, Europe, U.S.A., Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, Ecuador and from 1969 lived part of the time in Majorca, and more recently in various properties across the Scottish Borders. She died in July 2002 in Broughty Ferry.
Douthwaite seems to find it necessary, like a method actress, to inhabit the idea, to get inside the skin of the role, as it were. Her paintings, often grotesque for all their elegance, can range in mood from tragicomic frenzy to angst-ridden melancholy, but they usually have a certain exciting theatricality in common. Cordelia Oliver, 1981
Gallery Director Guy Peploe knew the artist well and is the recognised expert on her work. He published a monograph on the artist in 2016.
The Scottish Gallery exhibitions: 1977, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000 (Retrospective), 2005 (Memorial), 2011 (Retrospective – Paintings & Works on Paper), 2014, 2016, 2020 (London), 2021
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