Captivated by the work of Joan Eardley

Children and Chalked Wall 3 by Joan Eardley. ‘When the tenement buildings where she’d her studio were demolished in the late 50s … I’m told some lucky people found examples of her work among the debris,’ writes Paul Gunnion. Photograph: Estate of Joan Eardley

Thank you for the generous appreciation of Joan Eardley’s work by Frances Spalding (Review, 11 February). I was captivated by Eardley’s portraits and landscapes when I was a teenager in the mid-1950s. Her work was shown in the MacLellan Galleries, in Sauchiehall Street, near where I went to school beside Glasgow School of Art. Her sad children and simple landscapes stood out among the other very ordinary paintings and I became a fan without knowing anything about her until the 80s when there was a revival of interest in her work and I found out who she was and where she’d worked. When the tenement buildings where she’d her studio were demolished in the late 50s, I’ve been told that some very lucky people found examples of her work among the debris.
Paul Gunnion
Glasgow

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