Bet Low

Born in Gourock in 1924, Low enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art in 1942, studying throughout the War alongside fellow students Joan Eardley and Ian Hamilton Finlay. There, she also mixed with influential émigré artists Josef Herman and Jankel Adler, whose studio she eventually took on. Like Eardley, Low followed up her diploma with a formative residency under James Cowie at Hospitalfields, Arbroath.

Initially working as a set painter for the Unity Theatre in Glasgow, Low's early work can best be described as social commentary; her subject being the city and its inhabitants. A political progressive, Low was a founding member of the Clyde Group of Writers and Artists in 1946, whose manifesto centred around an egalitarian and accessible approach to art and poetry.

It is, however, her atmospheric depictions of the Scottish landscape - particularly Orkney - that Low is best known. Concerned with capturing transient light and weather conditions, Low adopted a style notable for its minimalism. Horizons, headlands and hillsides are all simplified into their purest forms, and a limited palette is employed to express the silvery grey light of the far north of Scotland.