GLASGOW.- This timely centenary exhibition bringing together over 60 works by Scottish painter Bet Low (1924-2007) has been supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund.

The centenary of the birth of the Scottish artist Bet Low RSA RSW RGI D.Lit (1924-2007) is to be marked in both Glasgow and Orkney through a collaboration between the Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art and the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney. The exhibition, Bet Low - An Island on Your Doorstep, will be the most comprehensive display of Low’s works since The Third Eye Centre’s 1985 exhibition curated by Cordelia Oliver, and includes unseen drawings and rare glimpses of Low’s material practice and process. The exhibition, which opens on the 11th January will reflect on her working life, from early studies of Glasgow to the late Orkney landscapes - both places that played a crucial role in the artist’s life and work, forming the backdrop to important stages in her long career.

The exhibition is composed of loans from 10 public and 13 private collections, bringing together early Glasgow works, alongside Low’s abstract works and her more widely known landscape paintings.

The loans are supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund. Created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund, the Weston Loan Programme is the first ever UK- wide funding scheme to enable smaller and local authority museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections.

Loans are from public and private collections, including The Bet Low Trust, Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow (CCA) Archive, Culture Perth & Kinross Museum & Galleries, The Glasgow School of Art, Lillie Art Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, National Library of Scotland, North Lanarkshire Council, Orkney Islands Council, the Pier Arts Centre Collection, Royal Scottish Academy Diploma Collection and University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

This particular work was completed the same year as Low left Glasgow School of Art, after completing her Diploma in Drawing & Painting. Low was twenty-one years old. The man is called Billy Higgins.

This oil is representative of a period of Low’s career when she was drawn to abstraction, creating works that were inspired by the movement of water, reflections and stones underneath. Green Place is on loan from the Royal Scottish Academy Diploma Collection (deposited, 2005).

Low’s earlier work captured mostly Glasgow city scenes and people. Whilst this lino cut is of a peace protest, other black and white scenes she produced that will be exhibited include a wide variety of subjects including the Co-operative float of a May Day Procession, and scenes from a children’s hospital ward. Low had been taught how to make linocuts in art classes at Greenock Academy.

Bet Low’s painting In the Hoy Hills (1977), gives weight to this landmass, through a colour palette that renders the nearest shoulder of the hill the darkest. The light and rain flickers on the receding flanks of hills. Low and her husband Tom Macdonald bought a small cottage on the island of Hoy, Orkney in 1967, ten years earlier than this painting and spent many summers there.

The last thirty years has seen a varied resurgence of interest in Bet Low’s career, works and legacy: from the establishment in 1994 of The Bet Low Trust which awards scholarships to Scottish Artists, to new research on contemporary Scottish women artists and their importance. All have helped to reposition Low's oeuvre within the broader context of Scottish and British art.

Douglas Erskine’s writing in Art Scotland emphasises her unique ability to capture the essence of the landscape, likening her to a "poet in paint”. Contemporary artist Karla Black included seven of Low’s paintings in her 2009 exhibition at Inverleith House in Edinburgh, allowing new readings by re-contextualising the paintings with her own sculptural works. The Lowlands Artist Collective’s show at Glasgow’s Oxford House in 2021 mounted seven artists based in Glasgow, Fife and Finland and incorporated work on paper by Bet Low. Each has introduced a new generation of artists and viewers to Low’s legacy.

This exhibition will also contain reference to Low's wider contribution to Scottish arts, in Glasgow, including co-organising an open-air exhibition on the railings at Glasgow Botanics (1956) to her role as one of the co-founders of the New Charing Cross Gallery (1963-68).

Jenny Brownrigg Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art commented: “We are pleased to have the opportunity to work with the Pier Arts Centre on this project to showcase the work of Scottish artist Bet Low. Glasgow and Orkney were both influential in Low’s creative endeavours, and so it is very fitting for the two organisations to collaborate and bring together work from throughout her long artistic career.”