Elizabeth Blackadder (b. 1931) has a gift for observing the world around her and re-creating it in her own particular style. Her intriguing paintings of plants, animals, landscapes, and still lifes have captivated viewers well beyond her native Scotland. The first woman artist to be elected to both the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy, Blackadder has explored a variety of artistic media, including drawing, oil painting, watercolors, and printmaking. Her subjects are drawn from close observation of her surroundings, such as the details of a domestic interior, the bright-hued petals of a tulip, or a view captured from her travels abroad. She sees the underlying structure, design, and color harmony in both the exotic and the everyday.

Blackadder's works spring to life on the pages of this catalogue, which tells the fascinating story of her career across the past sixty years, from her early days as a student at Edinburgh College of Art, to her friendships with Scottish painters William George Gillies, William MacTaggart, and Anne Redpath, to her most recent work.