A Woman’s Issue
International Women's Day in Scotland
International Women's Day in Scotland
Art as defiance. Music as an untold narrative. Love as an act of belief. The stories in this issue represent the work of mothers and painters, poets and prostitutes, suffragettes and the High Priestess of Soul. It's an issue about complex women, women whose stories have, with irreducible individuality, reinvented tradition, championed diversity and contributed to a difficult but essential legacy. In honour of International Women's Day, here in Scotland we celebrate the stories of women around the world.
Extract from Modern Scottish Women: Painters & Sculptors 1885-1965 Edited by Alice Strang Published by National Galleries of Scotland
PAT DOUTHWAITE 1934–2002 Born Glasgow 1934; died Dundee 2002
Pat Douthwaite was born in Glasgow in 1934, although throughout her life she gave 1939 as her birth year. Douthwaite was brought up in Paisley and began taking dance classes with Margaret Morris in 1947 where she met the artist J.D. Fergusson, Morris’s partner. Douthwaite initially pursued dance but by the end of the 1950s she decided to become a painter. Fergusson encouraged her in this but dissuaded her from formal training, declaring ‘Go to art school? If you go to art school, you’ll never be an artist – you are an artist.’
Leaving Scotland in 1958, Douthwaite spent time in Essex, Suffolk and London’s Soho, mixing in wide, bohemian circles which include...
Extract from What Happened, Miss Simone? By Alan Light Pu...
Mongol [mong-gohl], noun, 1. a member of a pastoral people now living chiefly in Mongolia. 2. (offensive) a person affected with Down’s Syndrome. Uuganaa is a Mongol living in Britain, far from the world she grew up in: as a nomadic herder she lived in a yurt, eating marmot meat, distilling vodka from goat’s yoghurt and learning about Comrade Lenin. When her new-born son Billy is diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome, she finds herself facing bigotry and taboo as well as heartbreak. In this powerful memoir, Uuganaa skilfully interweaves the extraordinary story of her own childhood in Mongolia with the sadly short life of Billy, who becomes a symbol of union and disunion, cultures and complexity, stigma and superstition – and inspires Uuganaa to challenge prejudice.Extract from Mongol By Uuganaa Ramsay...