Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, 87, has never courted fame yet she is something of a living National Treasure. The first woman to be elected to both the Royal Academy and Scottish Royal Academy she also carries the quaint title of Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland. It gives a clue to both her character and style: her most recognisable works are botanical studies in watercolour.
This exhibition of 30 works spans her entire career and reveals her skill, not only with paint, but as an etcher. “Her unrivalled powers of observation, stemming from a childhood interest in botany, give us her beautiful watercolours drawn from nature, skills which she honed in the 1980s, often with flowers from her own Edinburgh garden, ” says curator Annabel Stansfeld. “The cats, which are observed with such empathy, but never sentimentality, find their own way in and out of her paintings as if exploring her studio.”
From March 29th – June 12th at the Willis Museum, Basingstoke, UK
www.hampshireculture.org.uk
