A fitting tribute to Elizabeth Blackadder
When she died last year aged 89, among the richly deserved tributes to Elizabeth Blackadder, below, one of the foremost Scottish artists of her generation, were a few sniping asides. One critic wrote that her watercolours of irises “might have been painted by an unusually adept aunt”.
This withering aside was probably one of many such undeserved barbed comments aimed at Blackadder during a long and creative life. She blanked out the noise and continued to draw, paint and make original prints; mostly at the Glasgow Print Studio (GPS).
Her relationship with GPS began in 1985, after director, John Mackechnie, invited her to make work there. Over three decades, she created 150 editions. Never afraid to test boundaries, she experimented with lithography, screenprinting, etching, aquatint, carborundum, drypoint and woodcut.
Her prints, like her paintings, covered her immediate world; landscape, still life, animals, flora and fauna. The connection was personal: flowers she had grown, cats she reared as kittens, and places she had visited with her husband, artist John Houston.
Yesterday, a new exhibition opened at GPS devoted to Blackadder and her work.
As Mackechnie explains, Blackadder and printmaking – particularly etching – were made for each other.
“Her drawings – and, to some extent, her watercolours – are distinguished by the incredible quality of her line,” he says. “Her line can be sinuous and seemingly casual, and it can be incisive and taut, but it is always fluently, crisply precise. Of course, she uses light and shade, and she uses colour widely and well, but print brought out the strong linear quality of her work.”
This exhibition is a fitting tribute to Blackadder, and there will undoubtedly be more to follow. Elizabeth Blackadder runs until May 28.