Field of Barley by the Sea by Joan Eardley (1921-1963) captures a landscape in various colours combined with darker colours of black and grey making up the sky and a small tree. Thick strokes of gray and yellow-white colour makeup the sky, with perpendicular strokes from a palette knife in between the different layers. This is a common theme of a dark sky in Eardley's work, creating a moody atmosphere, but a major difference in this work is the use of bright colour in the sky and throughout the rest of the piece. Bright, smaller strokes of blue, yellow, and red on the right side of the painting form the sea and the field of barley in the scene. In the blue, there are circular strokes of paint with criss-crossing lines, creating a different kind of texture used by Eardley than is common, suggesting influences from Abstract Expressionism in this piece more than others. This is also present with the lines of paint cutting across the foreground, creating a chaotic nature to the piece. 

The end of Eardley's life was spent with half the year between Glasgow and Catterline, a Scottish fishing village in the northeast. During her time here, she painted many subjects including coastlines, cottages, and fields which is present in this work. Eardley would paint on location in order to capture the storms in the area, possibly in this work through the darker sky, and in these later years she shifted from using canvas to board in order to build up the oil paint in her work. This allowed Eardley to create the texture and capture the chaos of the scene in a way that suggested influences from Abstract Expressionism. This later work shows an attention to smaller details less present in other works from Catterline, showing an intimacy with the area. Eardley would spend the last few months of her life in Catterline, before passing from breast cancer in August of 1963.

Joan Eardley RSA, 1921-1963

Born in Warnham, Sussex, to Anglo-Scottish parents, and brought up in Lincoln and in Blackheath, London, Eardley studied art briefly at Goldsmiths College before moving to Glasgow with her mother and grandmother at the beginning of the Second World War. She trained at Glasgow School of Art under Hugh Adam Crawford before taking a wartime job as a joiner's labourer. In 1943 she graduated with both the Diploma prize for drawing and painting and the prize for portraiture.

Van Gogh, Vuillard and Bonnard influenced Eardley's early draughtsmanship and choice of domestic interiors. Henry Moore and early Italian renaissance masters brought a sculptural weight and humanity to the figure compositions. In 1947 Eardley resumed her art studies at Hospitalfield in Arbroath, under James Cowie, and the following year returned to Glasgow School of Art to pursue the post-diploma course awarded to her four years earlier. She was given two travelling scholarships and spent eight months visiting Paris, Venice, Florence, Siena and Rome. The sketches and compositions executed in France and Italy were shown at her first solo exhibition at Glasgow School of Art on her return in 1949.

In 1950 Eardley discovered the small fishing village of Catterline, near Stonehaven, Kincardineshire. From then on she divided her time between her studios in Glasgow and Catterline. The later gestural weather studies in chalk had much of the force of the Abstract Expressionists but never became totally abstract. The oils included collages layers of earth and vegetation under thick sweeps of paint.

A quiet, retiring person, Eardley pursued her art with single-minded purpose. Her style is individual and conforms to no particular schools. She was elected ARSA in 1955 and RSA in the spring of 1963 but died a few months later.