Wee bairns

Pretty normal, busy day at work today. Out after work to the Joan Eardley preview at the National Gallery.

Have always been interested in Joan Eardley's art since my work placement at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art back in my college days. I remember beaming with pride the first time I was allowed to set up an exhibition case in the main gallery with some photographs from her personal collection (though I was never trusted enough in the space of time I was there, to deal with real paintings)

A lovely exhibition of her work, it's well worth catching.
One of the paintings of the Samson children has always been my favourite. It shows 5 of the children standing in front of a grafitti'd wall and the kids look so cheeky it makes me smile.
The Samsons were a family of 12 children and were her most painted subjects (two of which are on the card above). I was standing at this painting when I overheard a woman ask a very smiley man
"Which ane o ye wrote oan the wall there then?"
It turned out that he had written on the wall, he was one of the Samson children and he had two of his sisters with him. It brought tears to my eyes seeing how proud he was to be standing next to a painting showing his family, he was bursting with happiness. I can't imagine how proud he must be, especially when you think that as a child he was probably wondering why this strange woman was wanting to paint their picture when they were just 'wee pair bairns fae Glesgae'.
It really made the painting I've always loved, all the more special seeing the subjects so much further along in their lives, yet still so happy and proud to be captured in such a great way.
As my granny would have said 'they must've felt like film stars'!