Four Artists, Three Generations

With their exhibition making its local debut by returning to the family's roots of Alloa, it gives local residents and visitors alike the opportunity to enjoy and even own a little bit of history.

Original art-work by Gilbert Dunlop and first edition copies of enid Blyton books (which he illustrated) are on display alongside work by his daughter Jenny (the 'model' for many of the enid Blyton illustrations), his granddaughter Jo and his nephew Hamish - well known to many local residents and a former pupil of Alloa Academy.

Gilbert Dunlop (1909 -1984) was the fourth of six children brought up at 84 Tullibody Road, Alloa in the early years of the twentieth century.

Educated at Sunnyside School and Alloa Academy, he showed precocious artistic talent, and in 1927, aged eighteen, secured a job with D.C. Thomson, the well-known newspaper and magazine publisher in Dundee.

Although he took the opportunity to attend evening classes at Dundee School of Art, he had no formal training and was largely self-taught.

After service in the RAF during World War II, Gilbert concentrated on illustration for children's books, magazines and greetings cards. he worked with several well-known children's writers including Enid Blyton.

In the 1960s, he designed greetings cards for Valentines of Dundee. After 1969, Gilbert undertook exclusively freelance work, which included illustration for the Scots Magazine, The Fireside Book and The People's Friend.

Throughout his life he was also a prolific painter, leaving on his death in 1984 a large and varied collection of work.

In 2007, Gilbert's daughter Jennifer Dunlop and granddaughter Jo Murray, both themselves artists, organised an extensive retrospective exhibition of his scenic paintings and drawings at the Art Society Rooms in Dundee.

Although he spent most of his life in Dundee, Gilbert Dunlop kept an affectionate memory of his childhood in Alloa, and regularly, with his wife and children, visited his brother Jim and family who lived at 23 Paton Street. his daughter Jennifer, a former art teacher and now a full-time artist based in Fortrose, has happy memories of her summer visits to Alloa.

Gilbert's nephew and the younger child of the Paton Street family (the elder is Dollar-based bi-ographer and children's novelist eileen Dunlop) was educated at Alloa Academy, then studied art in Aberdeen before pursuing a career in hotel management.

For the past twenty years, he has helped his wife to run a gardening business in Perthshire, while teaching adult art classes and pursuing his own love of landscape painting.

The youngest of the group, Jo Murray, is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art. She has worked as a jewellery designer, and is now store designer for Debenham's in Inverness.

In the autumn of 2010, inspired by the success of Gilbert's 2007 exhibition, Jennifer, Jo and Hamish conceived the idea of holding another which would bring the work of Gilbert together with some of their own.

This unusual and eclectic show, titled Four Artists: A Family Affair, ran at the Birnam Art Centre, Dunkeld, during April 2012.

Its success in turn provided the inspiration for Four Artists, Three Generations.

It gives the artists pride and pleasure to show their work in Alloa, where the family's roots are.

The exhibition is open daily (excluding Sundays) from 9am until 5pm and runs until Saturday 1 June.