Pat Douthwaite: Hogey Bear (1960)
By Brynn Gordon
In the National One Gallery in Edinburgh is the artwork Hogey Bear (1960), a textured, amorphous mass from which ab emerge a nose, two eyes, and two feet barely recognisable as human. It is simultaneously abstract and figurative; simply composed yet intricately rendered; warm and inviting yet ominous and foreboding. The figure we can only assume to be Hogey Bear dominates the canvas while appearing to disappear into it, as the textured white ground peeks through the thinly applied paint. The work seems to be comfortable dwelling in opposites.
Pat Douthwaite, Hogey Bear, 1960, Oil on board, 120.00 x 133.75cm. Gallery: Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art (Modern One)
This work was created by Scottish modern artist Pat Douthwaite, of her husband, Paul Hogarth, wrapped in his winter coat. Her enigmatic vision of her partner can be understood through her equally enigmatic life. Born in Glasgow in 1936, Douthwaite’s childhood was overshadowed by the Second World War and the series of schools she attended, all of which she found unendurable. Her first foray into art was in the Margret Morris Movement dance studio in Glasgow, where she became versed in modern dance and dance therapy that later influenced the British physical education curriculum. Joining Morris’s troupe allowed Douthwaite to travel to America on tour and put her in contact with Scottish Colorist painter John Duncan Fergusson, who implored her not to dull her natural talent by attending art school and that she already possessed all the creative intuition she would ever need. This time with Margret Morris could be seen as a foundational influence in Douthwaite’s expressive style, utilising laboured and emphatic strokes to convey the force and urgency of her ideas, as if dancing with her paint.
Douthwaite perused art in England, largely London and Suffolk, after the completion of her time with the troupe, traveling and exhibiting across the country between 1950 and 1960. Around this time she met Paul Hogarth, the inspiration for Hogey Bear, his nickname. The thick winter coat underscores that this portrait was done before Hogarth and Douthwaite moved to Majorca in 1963. After this move, her artworks became increasingly grotesque—her renderings of single figures, usually alone, naked, hairless, and smiling, made her popular in outsider art circles, presenting viewers with a more refined extension of the mystifying and slightly unsettling rendering of figures in Hogey Bear. Even in what could be seen as a simple presentation of a loved one cosily enveloped in their winter coat, the way it usurps his figure and resembles mud or slime rather than fur makes the intimate nicknamed title feel ironic. Douthwaite stated that Hogey Bear was a summation of Hogarth in his coat and herself pregnant with their child Toby, complicating the interpretation of the enveloping black mass as potentially relating to the significance and consumption of the process of motherhood. Even with this insight, it is still unclear what exactly the coat represents—could it be the overwhelming presence of Hogarth in her life as the father of her child? Was it that through the process of becoming parents she felt close enough to him to portray them both simultaneously? Regardless, the tension in their relationship and physical states at the time pre-empts her later interest in strange and powerful female goddesses that she explored in Majorca in Demeter (1967) with the help of neighbour Robert Graves.
But her personal life was not merely her only influence: during the same “Suffolk period” predating her time in Majorca, Douthwaite produced abstract, geometric compositions inspired by William Crozier and Willem De Kooning, showing her attention to both local Scottish and wider European innovations in form and abstraction. 1961’s Collage shares the organic tones and textures of Hogey Bear, but the bands of colour and lines of marble paper create a recurring and natural rhythm in their imperfect linear arrangement, perhaps an experiment in pushing how far one could extract an emotional reaction from a viewer without recognisable form, the natural conclusion of the slick black cloud in which she nestled Hogarth, herself, and her child.
Around 1970, Douthwaite left Hogarth to travel herself, traveling to India, Poland, Peru, and beyond. Her artistic need for solitude and strong personality left her little chance of having a conventional career but provided her the time to metabolise and reflect on the strangeness inherent in the world around her, from Charles Manson’s “helter skelter” she mused on in her diaries to the brutal attack she experienced in the mid-1970s in a case of mistaken identity and in her own relationships, giving her time and space to become the “High Priestess of the Grotesque” in British art. Ultimately, we can examine these roots in Hogey Bear, identifying the various themes of strangeness, female power, and abstraction as means of emotional expression that would go on to embody
Bibliography
Guy Peploe . “Pat Douthwaite by Guy Peploe | Modern Masters Women Events Programme.” The Scottish Gallery, August 13, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrVvjR9v08.
National Galleries of Scotland. “Pat Douthwaite | National Galleries of Scotland,” 2023. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/pat-douthwaite.
Scott, Corrymella. “Pat Douthwaite - the High Priestess of the Grotesque in British Art.” Corrymella Scott Gallery, November 22, 2014. https://corrymellascottgallery.co.uk/pat-douthwaite-high-priestess-grotesque-british-art/.
Scottish Gallery. “The Scottish Gallery,” December 21, 2023. https://scottish-gallery.co.uk/artists/pat-douthwaite/overview/.
www.margaretmorrismovement.com. “Margaret Morris | Margaret Morris Movement.” Accessed November 20, 2024. https://www.margaretmorrismovement.com/about/margaret-morris.