Patricia Douthwaite, artist: born Glasgow 28 July 1939; married 1960 Paul Hogarth (died 2001; one son; marriage dissolved); died Dundee 26 July 2002. Whatever theme or subject she chose to paint or draw, Pat Douthwaite's work remained at a glance uniquely hers. Although not usually associated with the Outsider Artists – that hard-to-define group of obsessives that produces regardless of the commercial art market and which has gained increasing favour on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years – Douthwaite was essentially an outsider. Unlike them, by the time of her death she had been shown by major commercial galleries in Britain and abroad and was represented in important public collections.Whatever she achieved, however, Douthwaite felt that she had under-achieved.

She had not been to one of the big art schools, probably to her advantage. She was for much of her life a single woman, a Scot battling against a British art world dominated by London, who was temperamentally unsuited to court the whims of fashion or join the art establishment. Those who did try to aid her career could, on occasion, find themselves dealing with a demanding woman with a waspish tongue.Douthwaite suffered decades of critical neglect. It was left to a few perceptive critics, such as the writer and painter Edward Gage, to more properly evaluate her contribution. When the Scottish Gallery gave her a solo show in Edinburgh in 1993, Gage judged that Douthwaite should "no longer be seen as an exotic maverick but acknowledged as one of the true originals of Scottish art".Patricia Douthwaite was born in Glasgow in 1939 into a conventional middle-class family.

Eight years later, she began to study movement, mime and modern dance with Margaret Morris, herself an artist and the charismatic wife of J.D. Fergusson, the vibrant Colourist and incisive draughtsman who was at this time revitalising Scottish art after many years in France. Having won the Phyllis Calvert Award for Mime, Douthwaite was able to study full-time with Morris.Pat Douthwaite was good enough to perform with Ted Shawn at Jacob's Pillow, in Massachusetts, before giving up the stage. She remained a theatrical personality, thirsting for public response which she was so often denied, and would have seemed a natural for an art world in which performance is now a common feature. In 1975, Douthwaite did create a multi-media performance work, Inanna, staged at the Traverse Theatre during the 1975 Edinburgh International Festival and later at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, but it did not satisfy her and this was a theme not developed.During her time with Morris, Fergusson encouraged Douthwaite's emerging artistic talent. In 1958, she went to live in Suffolk with a group of artists, including three Scots, "The Roberts" Colquhoun and MacBryde and William Crozier. She was also to meet the much older, prolific and successful illustrator and artist Paul Hogarth, whom she was to marry in 1960 and by whom she had a son, Toby.This was a competitive environment, in which Douthwaite struggled to find her own style among such positive artistic personalities.

Her early work included collages and was influenced by the work of the French artist Jean Dubuffet, coiner of the term Art Brut, whose Primitivism suited Douthwaite's growing concern with the pathos and grimness of life.She lived for about a decade with Hogarth, a marriage which after several happy years went sour, although they were not divorced until some time afterwards. A strong artistic rivalry developed between Douthwaite and Hogarth. He had a home at Deya, in Majorca, where Douthwaite entered the circle of the writer and poet Robert Graves. She was an alluring figure, and many years later, in an article in the magazine The Oldie, Hogarth recalled how, on one occasion, by staging a spontaneous dance performance, Douthwaite prevented Graves and his wife from leaving a party prematurely.After the separation from Hogarth, the insecure Douthwaite was emotionally and economically cut adrift to lead a nomadic existence. Over 30 years she lived in Majorca and in various parts of Scotland and Northumberland, also visiting North Africa, India, Peru, Venezuela, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, France, Italy, America, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan and Ecuador.There were emotional nadirs. On one occasion Douthwaite is said to have assaulted her mother, still living in Paisley until a few years ago; on another she herself was mugged brutally in Edinburgh. Life could be lonely and money was often hard to find.Douthwaite remained haunted by a sense of failure.