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Joan Eardley grew up in London but moved to [Auctherarder/ Bearsden/] Glasgow after the death by suicide of her father, who had been gassed during WW1. She attended Glasgow School of Art from 1940-1942 under Hugh Adam Crawford RSA. After war work, she attended the summer school at Hospitalfield in 1947 under the tutelage of James Cowie, RSA. In 1948 she spent a year at Glasgow School of Art on a post-Diploma Scholarship. In the same year she won the RSA Carnegie Travelling Scholarship and travelled to Italy and France. Upon her return to Glasgow she rented a studio and produced many paintings of the local tenement children. In 1951 she went to Catterline for the first time moving there permanently in 1956 and painting the fields and the sea, often incorporating organic elements such as grass and flowers into her paintings. She exhibited at the RSA Annual Exhibitions from 1943 until 1963, she became an Associate Member of the RSA in 1955 and an RSA in 1963, the year of her premature death from breast cancer.