The Remarkable Dame Elizabeth Blackadder

Dame Elizabeth Violet Blackadder, (Mrs Houston), DBE, RA, RSA (born 24 September 1931 in Falkirk) is a Scottish painter and printmaker. She is the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy.
In 1962 she began teaching at Edinburgh College of Art where she continued until her retirement in 1986. Blackadder worked in a variety of media such as oil paints, watercolour, drawing and printmaking. She attended Glasgow Print Studio where she worked with print makers to produce etchings and screen prints of flowers. In her still life paintings and drawings, she considers space between objects carefully. . Her work can be seen at the Tate Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has appeared on a series of Royal Mail stamps. In 1982 she was awarded the OBE for her contribution to art which was promoted to a DBE in 2003. In 2001, she was appointed Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland. Along with an an Honorary degree from Heriot-Watt University in 1989, Blackadder has been awarded honorary doctorates by at least three other universities. Her work remains in high demand at the most prestigious galleries and is included in many of the UK's most significant corporate and private collections