Animal With Sharp Teeth

By the mid-1960s, Douthwaite had fully developed her distinctive style. Self-taught, with the encouragement of J D Fergusson and his partner Margaret Morris in Glasgow some years earlier, Douthwaite had since mingled and be-friended the likes of William Crozier and The Two Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBryde, whilst living in Sussex and Soho in the late 1950s. During this period she married Paul Hogarth, the author and prominent illustrator. In 1967 she was included in an exhibition at the ICA gallery, alongside exhibitors including Ian Drury, Herbert Kitchen and Graham Ovenden. The works of this period are demarked by stark black backgrounds. Her style alludes to Dubuffet's Art Brut aesthetic, but also contains undercurrents of the stylisation of the Pop Art movement.