This remarkable artist had a unique early childhood: brought up by her Grandmother on an isolated beach in Kintyre, with her Mother often in a nursing home and her father away at sea in the Merchant Navy. The distant horizon, the distant islands, the endless Succession Of clouds, alone on the rocky foreshore, she had to discover her identity. When she grew up and had passed through Edinburgh College of Art with distinction, She embarked On a Career as an artist, producing an astonishing number Of works in Oils, watercolour and mixed media, ranging from very large to very small. The notable Characteristic Of her Watercolours is that they can achieve the same bold tonal and chromatic range as in her oil paintings, While in many of her seascapes, the tones and Colours used at the top of the painting are the same as those used in the lower half. She appears to have stored in her mind a seemingly inexhaustible number of Vivid images, remembered from places she has seen and experienced, Sometimes many years before. The mood, atmosphere and structure already Conceived as paintings Waiting to be Carried out. None of the seascapes is painted On the Spot, all are carried out in
the Studio. On the Other hand, she has never ceased throughout her life to study nature. She is an excellent draughtsman and has innumerable sketchbooks filled with vigorous observational drawings of rocks, cliffs, cloud formations and mountains. There is no Other artist Can think Of Who has a better understanding of clouds.
Another direction of her painting is that of an imaginative and symbolic nature. They are concerned With the human figure in relation to the landscape, and the over-riding theme is of the Conflict in life between good and evil. In some there are single figures, in others two or three grouped together or facing each other, sometimes many scattered over the canvas. In the background, distant horizons, distant islands, animals, birds, fish or angels across the sky.
In these she has created for herself a secret, solitary world that is always there giving her a sense of belonging to and understanding of the elements. A Sense of the intricate patterns of life, the moments of compelling inward stillness, in which for a second all things are clear.
Her life, obsessive, passionate, engaging, yet solitary. The life of an artist.
Pat Semple 