About the Artist
Joyce Gunn Cairns MBE has become one of Scotland’s most cherished artists, with nine works in the permanent collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, five works in the permanent collection of the City Art Centre, and works in other major collections including Balliol College, Oxford and Jesus College, Cambridge. Gunn Cairns trained in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, having previously completed a degree in German and Comparative Religion at Aberdeen University.
“…Gunn Cairns is a one-off, a maelstrom of creative energy which never stops probing and pushing. … There is an almost translucent softness to her heads and figures although … she has a fine strong line which is as forthright on paper as her character is in person. A Gunn Cairns portrait feels like it has been drawn from the outside in, using light-as-a-feather strokes, as though teasing out the subject’s psyche. ….
Her work never shirks from the big subjects of love, hope, ageing and death…” (Jan Patience)
