University Collections, University of Aberdeen are delighted to welcome the artist Joyce W. Cairns to talk about her life and work.

In the year celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Royal Scottish Academy, we are delighted to welcome Joyce W. Cairns to the University of Aberdeen to talk about her life and work.

About this talk

Drawing on personal memories and professional milestones, Joyce will discuss the experiences that shaped her career, from early inspiration at the Academy’s exhibitions and her studies at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, to her first time exhibiting at the RSA in 1971 and the scholarships that enabled her to travel and develop her practice.

The Artist and the RSA

Joyce will reflect on her remarkable lifelong relationship with the Royal Scottish Academy, tracing a journey that began as a schoolgirl visiting the RSA galleries in Edinburgh in the 1960s and culminated in her election as the Academy’s first woman President in 2018.

The talk will explore the changing role of the Royal Scottish Academy over the past six decades and Joyce's own contribution to its evolution. As Academician, committee member, Deputy President and ultimately President, she has witnessed and helped shape the Academy’s transformation. Combining personal recollections and insights into Scotland’s artistic community, this is a rare opportunity to hear one of the nation’s most respected painters reflect on a life devoted to art and education.

The Artist and Aberdeen

Many of Joyce's artworks feature the one-time fishing village of Footdee at the mouth of Aberdeen harbour as a backdrop. When she moved to the historic fishing village (known locally as Fittie), terraced cottages, communal greens and the village’s distinctive fishing sheds became the stage for her paintings. Grounded in contemporary life, these works are filled with ships, cats, gulls, empty bottles and domestic clutter, all set against the backdrop of Aberdeen’s oil boom.

In 2007 Joyce was invited by the University of Aberdeen and The Grampian Hospitals Arts Trust to submit a proposal for a work to be installed in the new Suttie Centre being built on the Foresterhill site to house Clinical Skills, the Anatomy Department, conference suite and lecture theatre. The resulting painting, The Patient (https://www.joycecairns.co.uk/diary-of-a-painting.html), is a highlight of the artwork on display for visitors to the Foresterhill campus.

Joyce Cairns PPRSA (https://www.royalscottishacademy.org/artists/256-joyce-cairns-pprsa/overview/)

The Patient by Joyce W. Cairns © the artist. Image credit: University of Aberdeen

Description supplied by the event organiser.