^{An Article by Margret Hunter}

It had been a long road from Ayrshire to Berlin, from the time I’d fulfilled a lifelong ambition and attended the Glasgow School of Art in my early thirties; just divorced and a single mother of two children, we were, in essence, starting anew.  If we were to survive I had to take my art as far as I could.

My desire to undertake postgraduate study with the renowned German artist Georg Baselitz, professor in the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, was fraught with obstacles; unreasonable age limits, official intransigence, finance and language.  I made it, against the odds but my naïve sense of triumph was short-lived.  I didn’t know anyone in Berlin, had never been separated from my children, had little knowledge of the language and no accommodation.  Initially I stayed in a hostel - and panic began to set in.

However, I managed to get a room in a student flat with two German men, who threw me into West Berlin life at the deep end; they shared their stories and gave me insights into this island life of capitalism surrounded by communist East Germany.

I started to exhibit my paintings and sculptures in London and Berlin but an especially memorable exhibition in which I took part was in 1988 in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Przemysl, Poland.  It was organised by the Solidarity movement and showed the work of some  thirty Polish artists.  The paintings were hung with all sorts of wire retrieved mainly from electric cable and using few tools. But this meagerness belied the sociopolitical importance of the event.  When I arrived at the Cathedral for the inauguration it was full to bursting and my translator dragged me to the front where the Archbishop was already on the raised platform waiting to start his speech surrounded by cameras.  I’d underestimated the importance of my appearance as a Scottish artist; I was presented with a prize and invited by the Archbishop for a meal served later by the nuns in the gardens of the monastery.  Visits around the city were organised where I heard about the town’s history and was given insights into the current political situation.