Elsa Vaudrey: Life and Painting (Hardback)

This is the first monograph on the Scottish-born artist Elsa Vaudrey (1905-1990), whose 60-year career began in the 1920s when she was a student at the Glasgow School of Art. Perhaps best known for her atmospheric abstract paintings, which she executed from the late 1950s onwards, she also produced a large body of figurative work, mainly still lifes and landscapes, most of which have never before been seen. This lavishly illustrated book brings together both stages of her artistic journey for the first time. Although informed by an understanding of the Glasgow School, Fauvism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, Elsa Vaudrey’s vision was highly personal and she developed an expressive and vibrant style entirely her own. Her paintings were often a response to her immediate surroundings, to places such as Wookey Hole in Somerset (where she lived with her husband, the artist Peter Barker-Mill), Chelsea in London, the Welsh countryside and, further afield, Rome, Paris, Antibes and Jerusalem. During her lifetime, she exhibited widely both in Britain and abroad, most notably in a series of solo shows at the Redfern Gallery in London. Much of the book was informed by the artist’s own papers, collected together in the Elsa Vaudrey archive, which chart key moments in her personal and professional life and document her friendships with figures such as John Cowper Powys, Mary Quant, Ceri Richards, Eduardo Paolozzi and Erica Brausen. Reproduced also is a personal reflection on the artist written by her friend, the author Raleigh Trevelyan.