Barbara Balmer had a singular vision. Her pictures have a curious, if not surreal, edge. In her instantly recognizable style, she took the everyday and simplified it into shapes and patterns that she filled with subtle gradations of colour.

Born in Birmingham, she moved to Scotland by way of a scholarship from Coventry School of Art that took her to Edinburgh College of Art (1949-1953). Her contemporaries are a roll call of familiar names of Scottish art: Elizabeth Blackadder, John Houston and Frances Walker to name a few. Balmer, however, eschewed the expressive brushwork and vibrant palette of the time and developed her own unique visual vocabulary.

Throughout her long career, spanning more than five...