Ellen Malcolm 1923-2002

Ellen Malcolm was born on 28 September 1923 in Grangemouth. After a secondary education at Aberdeen Central School, in 1940 Ellen enrolled as a student at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, in those days sited to the right of the main portal of the Robert Gordon College's quadrangle. The School's Principal was the urbane and gentle D.M. Sutherland RSA and its Head of Painting the charismatic Robert Sivell RSA.  

The latter was egocentric, and famously equating himself with Michaelangelo and Botticelli, had no truck with any form of modernism.  Yet, Sivell was deserving of the respect he commanded, Alberto Morrocco being the most eminent of the many students who benefited from his exacting standards in what may be termed academic virtues, not the least of which was good draughtsmanship. 

A press photograph (from "The Aberdeen Bon-Accord Journal") depicts Ellen seated in front of her Diploma Show in Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1944. She is flanked by six of her fellow male diplomates who standing, partly obscure her display of the life-painting and portraits, but clearly to be seen is a central composition of  two girls rather awkwardly posed in the deep recess of a window shelf.  

In truth Ellen's paintings at this time differ little from those of her fellow students:  'Sivellesque' with bold brushwork and a palette in which the modest brown of raw umber was pervasive.  The caption to this photograph of 1944 diplomates (small in number due to the Second World War) informs us that Professor Rudolf Schwabe, Principal of the Slade had been their adjudicator. 

After teaching training, Ellen was to teach part-time at Aberdeen Grammar School, and then returned to the same school where she herself had been educated – The Central now being renamed Aberdeen Academy, where she became assistant principal of the art department. Ellen continued to paint, and contributed to 'The 47 Group' exhibitions in Aberdeen Art Gallery.  

The nucleus of this coterie of ambitious painters was centred in studios in Back Wynd close to their alma mater Gray's. The attic of the building had once been a photographer's studio illuminated by a sloping wall of paned glass.

(It was here that the writer first inhaled the strongly seductive scent of pure turpentine and linseed oil, when as a schoolboy he posed for one of the studio's occupants namely Dan Stephen, an exact contemporary of Ellen at Gray's to whom I owe a double debt- firstly as an encourager of my youthful aspiration to be an artist, and now as a provider of valuable information for the writing of this obituary).  

The floor below was also a shared studio space, and it was in this milieu that Ellen was to meet her future husband, seven years her senior.  Gordon Cameron's courtship of Ellen was extraordinarily prolonged.  On his appointment as a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee in 1952 he would take the train back to Aberdeen at week-ends, yet a decade would pass before he and Ellen were married at Ferryhill Parish Church Aberdeen on 5 August 1962. 

They set up home together in the Perthshire Village of Invergowrie close to Dundee. The garden of 7 Auburn Terrace was to become a constant source of inspiration for Ellen, who like her husband had by this time discovered colour, the painting of Bonnard in particular being a shared enthusiasm. All good colourists have a mastery of tone, and therefore it is no paradox that her Gray's training proved valuable.

Ellen's garden paintings are lyrical, imbued with poetic mood and executed with a freshness and delicacy of touch which beguiles the spectator into thinking, erroneously, that her artistry was effortless. No less sensitive are her flower paintings, usually small in scale.  

Here there was scope for daring colour, and she shared with Odilon Redon the magic ability to convey by subtle implication the very essence of the flowers she painted. Some ten years before her husband's death Ellen's health began to fail, and with increasing frequency she would take herself to bed. Subsequently her ailment was to be diagnosed as Parkinson's Disease.  

Though Gordon Cameron by no means enjoyed robust health himself, he nevertheless performed the demanding task of being Ellen's carer with great devotion. All too soon Ellen would have neither the inclination nor indeed the physical ability to paint, but she would continue to be represented in the Academy's Annual Exhibitions by dint of Gordon framing and submitting past works by her in stock. 

After Gordon's death in April of 1994, the need for professional care being self-evident, Ellen became a permanent patient in a private nursing home, "Mundamalla" in Newtyle north of Dundee. Here, her distressing affliction continued to exact its inexorable toll for a further eight years until her peaceful passing on 14 March 2002.  

In this period she was not entirely alone, being regularly visited by her younger brother Ian Malcolm and his wife Margaret. Ellen will be remembered as someone who abhorred pretension, with a quiet demeanour which masked resolutely held beliefs. Much admired by her fellow Academicians she won the Guthrie Award in 1952, and was elected an ARSA in 1962.  

In 1975 she was appointed as the Academy's representative on the Board of Governors of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. A year later she was elected to the rank of RSA. The Academy's collections are not only graced by her Diploma picture but are further enhanced by a David Muirhead Fund purchase. Ellen exhibited widely, her paintings being purchased by many public collections.  

She was a loyal contributor to the Dundee Art Society's exhibitions, and in 1973 in the Royal Glasgow Institute's exhibition she was the recipient of the prestigious David Cargill Award. By the cruel disease which cut short Ellen Malcolm's painting career and by her death, the RSA and Scottish Painting mourn the loss of a vibrant and sensitive artist. Yet we can rejoice in her legacy:  joyous paintings which will give enduring pleasure.

RSA Obituary by Peter Collins RSA, transcribed from the 2002 RSA Annual Report