This exhibition, celebrating the centenary of the birth of Scottish artist Bet Low (1924-2007), is presented through a collaboration between the Pier Arts Centre in Orkney and the Reid Gallery (The Glasgow School of Art), and supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund.

Following its debut at the Reid Gallery in Glasgow at the start of the year, the exhibition will open at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, on Saturday 1 March. With more than 60 works on display, including unseen drawings and archival material, the exhibition will give a rare insight into Low’s working practice, bringing together early Glasgow works with abstract works and her more widely known landscape paintings.

Bet Low was born in Gourock (1924) and attended Glasgow School of Art from 1942-45. Although Glasgow would remain home, Low and husband, artist Tom Macdonald (1914-1985) bought a small cottage in Lyness, Hoy in 1967 where they spent many summers. The time spent documenting Hoy’s distinctive vistas had a great impact on Low’s work, helping her develop a unique style of figurative landscape painting and understanding of colour - reducing land, sea, sky and weather to simple elements that define a particular moment.

This is the largest collection of Bet Low works to be gathered together this century. In 1985 a significant retrospective exhibition was selected by Cordelia Oliver, and toured Scotland travelled to Dumfries, Perth and the Pier Arts Centre.

The exhibition is composed of paintings from the Pier Arts Centre Collection, and loans 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, Royal Scottish Academy Diploma Collection and University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections.

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.

Exhibition curators Jenny Brownrigg and Andrew Parkinson will lead an informal tour of the exhibition on Saturday 1 March at 3pm. Admission is free and no booking is necessary.

The Pier Arts Centre is open Tuesday-Saturday 10:30am-5pm. Admission is free.

, Visit Orkney, Life in Orkney, Culture & Events, Stromness