Pat Douthwaite - Woman In Profile With Vase (detail) © Reproduced By Permission of Toby Hogarth (2007)
Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums cares for an archive of over 2,000 prints made at Peacock since the printmaking workshop was established 50 years ago. A new exhibition at Peacock & the worm on Castlegate includes work on loan from the AAGM Peacock collection.
Pat Douthwaite’s visionary suite of lithographs, Apples Kabuki, is being shown in their entirety for the first time since their publication in 1988. The ten prints and a title sheet are inspired by Japanese Kabuki theatre and are described by her biographer, Guy Peploe, as “great examples of her nervous line and decorative patterns”.
Pat Douthwaite - Apples Kabuki Title © Reproduced By Permission of Toby Hogarth (2007)
Born in Glasgow in 1934, Pat Douthwaite had a varied career which was also tragically short. Her legacy is her extraordinary work: utterly original and arresting paintings and drawings which provoke a huge variety of responses and persist in the memory – and which, like all great artworks, transcend the times in which they were made, defying any impulse to box them into an art historical cul-de-sac.
The Apples Kabuki suite of prints published by Peacock reveal a rare excursion into printmaking for the artist. Originally a dancer, she turned her hand to painting in the late 1950s. A self-taught artist with no formal training, her early career in the 1950s and 1960s found its roots through a close circle of iconoclastic writers and painters, including Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, the poet Robert Graves and writer Brendan Behan. Douthwaite had her first solo show in 1958 and continued to exhibit right up to her death in 2002.
Pat Douthwaite - Head Neck and Shoulders © Reproduced By Permission of Toby Hogarth (2007)
The archive contains over 2000 objects with new work being added yearly. This is a priceless resource for Aberdeen Art Gallery, Peacock and all citizens interested in accessing and viewing the prints. Works from the archive can often be seen in the Art Gallery and are available to all to view online through the Art Gallery website.
Pat Douthwaite - Woman In Profile With Vase © Reproduced By Permission of Toby Hogarth (2007)
New work from Peacock is added to the AAGM collection annually. The collection has been digitised and is available to browse on the AAGM e-museum pages on the Collections tab.
Click here to browse the Peacock collection
Pat Douthwaite: Apples Kabuki
16 May – 28 June 2025
the worm, 11 Castle Street, Aberdeen, AB11 5BQ
open Wednesday – Saturday 12noon – 5pm
