Beaty, Jessie Moira

Person

Beaty, Jessie Moira

1922-2015

Born in Prestwick, Jessie Moira Munro moved to Shawlands in Glasgow when she was five years old. After attending Hutcheson’s Grammar School, she enrolled at the GSA in 1939 where she was a contemporary of Joan Eardley and Margo Sandeman, but left after a year to join the war effort. From 1942 she worked at Bletchley Park, initially as a secretary, but later became a cryptographer, a fact she did not divulge to her family until the 1980s. After the war in Europe ended, she moved to the Films Division of the Ministry of Information in London, working for its director Jack Beddington. She returned to Glasgow in 1947 to resume her studies at the School of Art where she met Stuart Beaty, a sculptor, whom she married in 1952.

Following teacher training at Jordanhill College she taught in the Gorbals until moving to Hawick in the Borders where Stuart had a successful career in textiles with Pringle of Scotland. She taught part-time in various local schools and during the late 1950s and 60s she exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions, becoming a professional member of Scottish Society of Women Artists in 1974. She also exhibited at Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art.

After the death of her husband in 2004, she moved to the Stirlingshire village of Balfron to be near her daughter, and still painted regularly. Her final year was a triumph as she had a sell-out retrospective exhibition in the Harbour Gallery, Kirkcudbright, and was represented in the town's major summer exhibition, Glasgow Girls 1920-60, which she opened.

• GSA Record
• The Herald, obituary, 29 January 2015