Scottish painter and printmaker Dame Elizabeth Blackadder is known for her delicate, lyrical still lifes and landscapes, and for her studies of familiar, domestic symbols subjects such as flowers and cats. She was the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy, and in 2001 was appointed the Queen’s first female Painter and Limner in Scotland. Despite living through modernism’s artistic heights, Blackadder remained unusual among her contemporaries, continuing to unapologetically embrace traditional methods and subject matter. Her work can be seen globally at the Tate Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As is illustrated by ‘Still life with Irises’, her work shows a distinctive break from the traditional Western organization of space. Blackadder considers the ‘negative’ space between subjects carefully, with such organization being a key part of the final composition. The objects are composed arrangements against a flat background, a simple block of colour made parallel to the picture frame. This can be said to place emphasis on the true subjects, whilst also resulting in a pleasingly modern take on the long-admired still-life tradition. If Blackadder’s subjects are representational, the spatial voids they create may be considered abstract.