Art reviews: Journeys From Home | Journeys Together

By Susan Mansfield
Published on Thursday 2 February 2012 00:00

Their styles are worlds apart, but Elizabeth Blackadder and her late husband John Houston often approached the same subjects together

JOURNEYS FROM HOME - THE PARK GALLERY, CALLENDAR HOUSE, FALKIRK ****

JOURNEYS TOGETHER - PATHFOOT BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING ****

LAST summer brought a brace of exhibitions marking the 80th birthday of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, orbiting around a major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery. These twinned shows are smaller, more intimate: one celebrating her lifelong partnership with her husband, the artist John Houston, who died in 2008; the other a kind of homecoming, in Falkirk, the town where she grew up.

Seeing Blackadder’s work with Houston’s side by side in Journeys Together is particularly interesting. Had they not been married, there would be no reason to pair them for a two-person show. They remain strikingly different artists: Houston, the expressionist, the experimenter, the painter of landscape, weather, drama; Blackadder, quieter, more meditative, a master of still life and flower painting.

But even if their works appear to have little to say to each other, there was doubtless a conversation going on. Blackadder and Houston worked cheek-by-jowl for 50 years, latterly with a studio each in their spacious Victorian house in Edinburgh. They painted portraits of each other, travelled together to the same places, albeit finding inspiration in very different things. When one was preparing an exhibition, the other became their studio assistant.

What conversations went on, we are not party to. But art, and in particular a commitment to painting, was the driving force in both lives. What is perhaps most remarkable is that their partnership was one in which both were able to develop freely, ploughing a furrow entirely their own. Continuing to develop, even in retirement, both reached the height of their powers.

Blackadder and Houston met at a dance at Edinburgh College of Art some time in 1952-53, Houston’s postgraduate year. In the summer of 1954 they travelled together to Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. Both also spent time in Italy separately on travel scholarships. They were married in 1956, and in due course both joined the teaching staff at ECA.

The earliest works from Journeys Together date from the 1950s: a portrait of Houston by Blackadder in 1955, a reminder of what a subtle, thoughtful portrait painter she is; a pen and ink study of Blackadder by Houston dated 1957-58 showing us some of his considerable skill as a draughtsman. Other sketches from their travels together in France capture the immediacy of a moment: over coffee, after a meal at the Colombe d’Or, Houston sketched his wife across the table.

Both seemed to realise early on that travelling would play an important part in driving their art forward. Although Houston would look increasingly to Scottish landscapes, and Blackadder to still lifes, both would return refuelled by their travels, Blackadder with trinkets in her suitcase to add to the collection of objects she would later paint.

Curator Annabel Macmillan doesn’t overplay the idea of comparison, and wisely so. Instead, Journeys Together celebrates two parallel journeys which occasionally touch. The opening pair of still lifes, Red Still Life with Dragon Fruit and Oysters by Blackadder, and Anemones in a Yellow Vase by Houston were painted at different times, but they seem to suggest an implied meeting point of colour and intensity.

In the Western Isles in 1966, Blackadder painted a watercolour landscape of a white house perched on a green hill above a grey inlet. Back there, in 1975, Houston was working in watercolour. Rainbow Over the Sea, Harris captures a brief moment of illumination on an otherwise grey day. Blackadder began to paint flowers while Houston went fishing, though it was she who produced the masterful screenprint, Koi Carp, Chion-in Kyon, where the brightly coloured fish seem to move like phantoms just under the surface of the water.

Though they travelled to the same places, they would speak of “finding” different things. In Venice, for example, Houston might be painting the light on the Grand Canal (there is a fine example here, Grand Canal Series No. 25) while Blackadder’s eye might be drawn by the stray cats, or the seagulls perched on the roofs overlooking the fishmarket.

Japan, which they visited for the first time in 1985, was a big event in the lives of both artists. Houston’s painting Kyoto, 1986, is unusual, experimental, almost cubist in the way it shapes mountains and buildings. Blackadder, always drawn to elements of Japanese style and technique, now embraced them more fully, with works such as Japanese Still Life Black and Silver 1999 showing how thoroughly she made them her own.

Including works by their teachers and contemporaries from Stirling University’s impressive collection, this show begins to point to circles of influence and inspiration. But the watchword is freedom. While both were rigorous and hard-working, both had a healthy disrespect for anything which would restrict them.

Journeys from Home at the Park Gallery in Falkirk is an intimate celebration of Blackadder’s own work in her home town; it even includes her school photographs (captain of the hockey team at Falkirk High). It is too small a show to be called a retrospective, but it does touch on all the main themes of her work.

Two display cases show some of the objects she uses in her still lifes, many of them brought back from travels: a tea caddy, or a colourful ribbon, objects collected for their colour or shape. She groups them instinctively with flowers from the garden, or a cat if one happened to wander into the composition. Blackadder’s still lifes are an endless experimentation in balancing objects, colours and patterns. Whether from the 1960s or from 2011, they appear entirely fresh.

Hoopoe over St Emillion, 2003 is a striking painting, the colourful bird captured for an instant against the rooftops of the town. Bird Market, Paris, 1960 hardly seems 40 years older, a vivid scene captured at night in watercolour with an almost magical quality. Her flower paintings have something of the same casual ease – which is usually anything but casual or easy. Lacking the static precision of so much botanical painting, these plants have life in them, and (which is even more skilled) they imply there is more life as yet uncaptured.

The show is a fond portrait of Blackadder the travelling artist, the still life master, the exacting draughtsman, the gifted flower painter. A significant number of new paintings show that, even at 80 and widowed, she has not stopped moving forward. Her work has, still, a measure of delight – and it is a delight to see it.

• Both shows run until 25 February. Artist Lys Hansen will give an illustrated talk on the life and art of selected Scottish women artists at the Pathfoot Building on 16 February at 11am

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