Free entry | Building accessibility
Mon to Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 12-5pm
RSA Lower Galleries
Please note: As a result of strike action from National Galleries of Scotland members of PCS Union, the gallery will be closed on Wednesday 12, Sunday 16 and Thursday 20 August.
A Personal Odyssey explores the career of acclaimed painter Joyce W. Cairns as part of our 200th anniversary celebrations. As the first woman to be elected President of the RSA and an influential educator to generations of Scottish artists, Cairns has long been an important voice in Scottish art.
This exhibition highlights major bodies of work from across Cairns’ career, with the haunting characters of her Aberdeen harbour scenes on view alongside monumental paintings from her seminal War Tourist project. Early works from the artist’s days as a student at Gray’s School of Art are on view alongside her distinctive figurative painting, pulling from memories of her childhood and her home in the once fishing village of Footdee. The exhibition traces the progression of Cairns’ intensely personal, autobiographical style of painting and position her as a linchpin in the trajectory of contemporary Scottish art.
Born in Edinburgh, Joyce W. Cairns PPRSA studied painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1966-71), and at the Royal College of Art, London (1971-74). Following a fellowship at Gloucester College of Art and Design, she studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 1976 she returned to Aberdeen to teach Drawing and Painting at Gray’s until 2004 when she left to complete a substantial body of work culminating in the exhibition War Tourist at Aberdeen Art Gallery. Cairns was President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 2018 to 2022.
