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Biography
Born Glasgow 1939. Her early artistic development was encouraged by the Scottish Colourist J D Fergusson from whose wife, Margaret Morris, Douthwaite received lessons in dance and mime over a period of years. In 1958 she joined three prominent Scottish artists in Suffolk; the 'Roberts' Colquhoun and MacBryde and William Crozier. As a developing and self-taught artist, Douthwaite initially struggled to find a distinctive style among such positive personalities. To these should be added the illustrator Paul Hogarth whom she married in 1960. Increasingly she began to develop a taut, simplistic primitivism which dealt in 'anger, joy, rage and happiness' through distortion of the human figure. As her art grew more striking and original, Douthwaite became haunted by a sense of failure and experienced bouts of severe depression. Until the mid-1980's, she was generally regarded as an eccentric maverick and outsider. Steadily thereafter the mood changed and exhibitions in London, Glasgow, New York and Chicago followed. The wry humour linking both the decorative and the grotesque in much of her work has surely much to do with this change. The Scottish Gallery of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum are among many institutions holding examples of her work. |
