Painter Joan Eardley's life was cut tragically short. But her work lives on

“Joan Eardley’s life was a paradox. She was shy and gentle, yet powerful... she painted not only the city, but also the sea and the seasons of the year; and while her creative power was flowing fiercely, her life was extinguished.”

So wrote William Buchanan in a 1976 book about the painter, who died from breast cancer in 1963 at the age of just 42. She died leaving a work called Two Children unfinished. Many artists have left many works uncompleted, but it is a mark of Eardley’s talent that six decades later, another artist has ‘finished’ her painting.

Sisters Pat (left) and Ann Samson (right) with artist Kate Downie who completed Joan Eardley's unfinished painting of them, called Two Children | John Devlin

Kate Downie said she felt like she was engaging “in conversation” with Eardley, as she tried to work out what the final form of the picture would have been. In a lovely touch, an exhibition called Conversations with Joan, at Glasgow Women’s Library, saw the ‘Two Children’ in question, Pat and Ann Samson, reunited with the painting they sat for all those years ago.

If the test of great art is longevity, it’s clear that Eardley’s creative power lives on, flowing as fiercely as ever.