TALK: Joan Eardley - artist and environment, Kerry Gledhill (NGS)

This event is part of the Aberdeen Artworlds Exhibition programme.

The enduring image of Joan Eardley (1921-1963) engulfed in the elements, with her easel and canvas tied down against the wind and sea spray speaks volumes about an artist who spent a great deal of time painting outdoors. This lecture will explore Eardley’s artistic practice through archival photographs, letters and collected ephemera from her studio spaces.

Kerry Gledhill is Senior Librarian at the National Galleries of Scotland, with specialist knowledge of modern and contemporary art, artists books and printmaking. She is the curator of Joan Eardley - The Nature of Painting currently on show at the Modern Two in Edinburgh.

Eardley is a painter best known for her vibrant depictions of children in Townhead, Glasgow in the 1950s, and of wildly expressive landscapes made in and around the small Aberdeenshire fishing village of Catterline. These important subjects are represented in the Aberdeen Artworlds exhibition by the recent acquisition in 2026 of the painting of and by the seascape which came into the University's collection as part of the Linklater Bequest in 1976. University Collections are delighted to welcome Kerry Gledhill to speak about this important Scottish artist and her connection with the region.

Attendees are invited to visit the Library gallery (ground floor) before or after the talk to see Joan Eardley's Andrew and Salmon Nets on the Shore along with other paintings from the Linklater Bequest.

Image credit: Audrey Walker, Joan Eardley Painting the Sea at Catterline, about 1959. Joan Eardley Archive, National Galleries of Scotland © Audrey Walker

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Host or Publisher University of Aberdeen Museums, University of Aberdeen