Work by Jennifer Hamshere :: Poem by Gerda Stevenson
At Miss Eardley’s
Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley, born Warnham, 1921, died Killearn, 1963; artist; her extraordinary output was created in just fifteen years before she died of cancer; celebrated for her portraits of street children in Glasgow, and for her landscapes and seascapes of the North East coast of Scotland.
From Quines by Gerda Stevenson
Artist’s statement
Joan Eardley had great empathy with the impoverished children who played in the back streets of Glasgow in the 1950’s and 1960’s where tenements were in decay with boarded-up shop fronts covered in graffiti.
The children are full of life and chatter, finding it impossible to stay still, so they are observed in an immediate, painterly fashion, full of colour and movement.
My piece echoes these children against a background red from the stove to warm a child’s bum.