Painter and administrator, born in Glasgow, married to the artist James Spence. With him she founded the Glasgow Group in the late 1950s, which did much to promote an interest in contemporary art in the west of Scotland and elsewhere. Paterson studied at Glasgow School of Art, in Spain and Portugal. She was elected RSW in 1966 and to Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1978, and was a winner of the Anne Redpath and Latimer Awards. She showed in mixed exhibitions in Scotland and abroad and had a solo show at Compass Gallery, Glasgow, in 1971, being included in The Compass Contribution at Tramway, Glasgow, in 1990. Paterson was noted for her unusual pictures of ordinary people, often old, lonely and hard-up, which she treated with sympathy.