Joyce Gunn Cairns
Joyce Gunn-Cairns was born in Bonnyrigg southwest of Edinburgh, but has been based in the city since 1977. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and began exhibiting her work in the late 1980s. Her paintings and drawings, which are intensely personal, explore her own emotions and she often uses her own body as a point of departure. Her portrait drawings are usually of people she knows well, and they tend to sit for her regularly over a period of time. She has an enduring love of literature and enjoys capturing writers’ likenesses. Over the last thirty years she has drawn many writers including: Tóibín, A. L. Kennedy, Alasdair Gray and Kathleen Jamie. She has shown her work in many solo and group shows and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery holds ten of her distinctive portrait drawings.
