Antonia Quirk

All of Kerry's choices in this room both clarify and suggest. Those synergies she talked about when I first met her are now so clear. Hanging Joan's seeded grass and daisies in front of Paul Nash's strange equinox painting doesn't just bring out the folk art elements of Joan's work, but hints at something more primal, something almost semi-pagan. And Monet, of course, with that curious apricot snow.

In their different ways, these artists reach so enigmatically into the rhythms of nature. It's like a room full of visionary mystics. And I think you can even hear that too, in Joan's almost otherworldly voice, in the few BBC archive recordings we've heard through this programme. The more you try, the more you think of new things, new ways of doing this particular subject, then...

Last day of March, the press launch. Modern 2 is open again, and at last spring sun floods the windows. Kerry is giving tours to journalists, and I spot Joan's niece Anne in the crowd.

She's painting on the shore. Next to her is enormous canvas, pots of paint, an easel. She's wearing big overalls and heavy boots. And the sea looks ferocious. And she's concentrating very, very hard on this image.

Voit nähdä hänen huoneensa, mutta kaikkea siitä, miten hän asuu, ja siitä, miten hän sopii, tarkoittaa täysin käsittelyä ja koncentraatiota työssä tällä väärällä ympäristöllä. Kun aloitin paikalleen, en löytänyt ettei halua liittyä, koska yritän tehdä jotain, mutta en ole aivan varma siitä, mitä teet, joten pysyvät yrittämään.

Ehkä suurimmassa taustassa on J.M.W. Turner, joka on usein valittanut Britannian suurimmista ja tärkeimmistä taistelijoista.

In 1842 he strapped himself to a ship's mast to experience a storm. But Turner wasn't actually out there with his oils and canvas. And yet here is Joan Eardley, so close to the shore with her easel. She's part of the beauty and ferocity of the Scottish landscape. As though the act of painting, and even the paint itself, is just a continuation of the storm.

In her work and short life she achieved an astonishing intensity of expressiveness. Her face turned directly into the wind. I don't really know what I'm painting. I'm just trying to paint. You've been listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. It was presented and produced by me, Antonia Quirk.