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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.
Douglas Hall, the first Keeper of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art wrote in 2000: ‘I like to remember Douthwaite as a young woman full of mixed diffidence and hope, embarking on a voyage that was to come near to shipwreck many times. Those of us who came into contact with her, though we may often have had to suck our fingers, have some responsibility along with Douthwaite herself for the fact that she has not had proper recognition of her status as a painter of distinction. On the other hand she would then be like several others. As it is she is unique.’
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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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