Pattern recognition …
East End outsider artist Madge Gill (1882–1961) covered everything from postcards to 10-metre-long calico rolls with densely wrought, kaleidoscopic chequerboard patterns, from which peek impassive female faces with cherry mouths and wide eyes.
Second sight …
Gill had lost the sight in one eye following an illness and what she trained her pen on was an inner world – or perhaps the other world.
Kindred spirits …
She had been introduced to spiritualism and astrology by her aunt. After the death of her second son in 1918 and the stillbirth of a daughter the following year, she began drawing as a way to contact them. Yet she was close-lipped about her work’s imagery. For Gill, her hand, toiling in the dark or by oil lamp, was not guided by a spirit per se, but a life force she dubbed Myrninerest.
The small faces …
It remains a mystery how she interpreted the faces in their tangle of abstract patterns, be it as those of her children communicating from the other side or herself.
