The Peebles-based artist’s skill in previsualising how her colours will look, in a painting, has taken a lifetime to develop, from early steps, on the back of cardboard boxes, in the kitchen with her mum.
Geraldine’s creative journey also includes studying at Manchester Art College in the late 1960s and teaching her own children, Max and Sophie, both of whom went to Glasgow School of Art.
When Geraldine took A-level art, at Ellesmere Port Girls’ Grammar School, her mum asked the art teacher, Mr Bramwell, if Geraldine would pass and he replied: “If Geraldine doesn’t, nobody else will.”
At Manchester Art College, where Geraldine liked making big canvases, she says, thinking back: “Most of my work was about colours, different ways of expressing colour in a variety of mediums.”
During art school, Geraldine made many items, such as a hedgehog door stop, buying the materials from Fred Aldous in Manchester.
She was also a regular at Laura Ashley buying bags of materials to make dresses, and at one stage, in later life this experience led to a knitwear business.
Geraldine really enjoyed art school but at that time wanted to work in healthcare.
After a long period of thinking about her life’s direction she qualified as a physiotherapist, firstly working at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London.
“Art never leaves you,” Geraldine said. “I never stopped painting.”
As a friend said: “Geraldine is never without a pen or a piece of paper.”
As soon as her children, Max and Sophie, could hold a pencil and brush Geraldine would sit and make art with them ad infinitum covering the kitchen wall with their work.
After retiring in 2010 Geraldine threw herself back into painting, creating watercolours of flowers with her favourite studio being “out in the garden”.
The majority of her show was framed by Toby Watts, of Peebles’ Tweed Art, who also hung the work in the studio.
It has not all been floral art though and Geraldine attended evening classes including life drawing at Edinburgh College of Art.
From 2015 to 2019 Geraldine branched out into creating watercolours of buildings, including the restored 1913 cinema in Campbeltown and the town hall with its distinctive white spire.
Geraldine added: “Every time I do anything whether a building or a flower I have to find my own palette of colours.
“It is very much a case of previsualisation and marked attention to detail.
“I might think in my head ‘Oh I want to paint a buttercup but it will take days for that to come to fruition’, it is not quick or done straightaway.
“There is lots of thinking.”
The show runs in Dawyck Botanic Garden’s studio till August 2.