Marjorie Campbell

Marjorie Anderson was born in 1936 to medical missionary parents in Changzhi, northern inland China. Her father's death during the Sino-Japanese war led to the return of the family, mother and two daughters, in 1939 to the maternal home at Belleview Terrace in Edinburgh. She attended Alvie Primary School, Trinity Academy and the Mary Erskine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Marjorie's artistic talents were early recognized and nurtured by her schools and family. Her childhood and holidays in the Scottish countryside provided her earliest subject matter.. The work was characterized by keen and perceptive observation, and a profound respect and sensitivity for the forms of nature. Her life-long exploration of materials and techniques gave her the ability to express her experience in her art. She became a painter, illustrator, teacher, lecturer, quilter, photographer, and designer for copper-wheel engraving on glass. While she was committed to family life with its joys and sorrows, responsibilities and interruptions, Marjorie did not allow these to extinguish her art but rather incorporated her wealth of experience through her art into a personal vision. She was seldom fully satisfied with her own work and many hundreds of works were relegated to loft space so that it has been for others to reveal the full extent of this important contribution to Scottish art after her death in 1999.