Camille Souter (born Betty Pamela Holmes; 22 October 1929 – 3 March 2023) was a British-born Irish abstract and landscape artist. She lived and worked on Achill Island and was a Saoi of Aosdána.
Early life
Souter was born Betty Pamela Holmes in Northampton, England, on 22 October 1929, but she was raised in Ireland. Souter received a general education at Glengara Park School in Dun Laoghaire. She originally trained as a nurse at Guy's Hospital in London. Souter began painting, after attending art classes as part of occupational therapy whilst she recovered from tuberculosis on the Isle of Wight. Although largely self-taught, Souter took up sculpture in 1950 as her convalescence continued in Dublin. She was trained there by Yann Renard-Goulet. Souter returned to London and completed her nursing studies in 1952, before abandoning the profession in favour of painting. Early patrons of her work included Basil Goulding, Gordon Lambert and the architect, Michael Scott. The couple were married in 1953 and separated in 1955. The couple had four children together before Morris died of sepsis in 1970.
Career
Souter's first solo show was at El Habano restaurant on Grafton Street in Dublin in 1956. The New Vision Gallery in London showed her works in 1958. Souter had works simultaneously in a two-person exhibition with Barrie Cooke at the Ulster Museum in 1965, whilst also showing eight works at the New Gallery on Belfast's Grosvenor Road, including Northern Plains (Winter), Town Creeping Out, and Trains and All That. In 1971 four of Souter's works were included in The Irish Imagination 1959-1971 in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, which later in the same year travelled to Washington to promote Irish Culture abroad.
Souter exhibited frequently with the Irish Exhibition of Living Art since 1953, the Independent Artists since 1960, and with the Oireachtas since 1970, The Douglas Hyde Gallery held a retrospective of her work in 1980, as did the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2001. She was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 2008, where she was first elected a member in 1981. Souter lived and worked on Achill Island.