Art Brut Then and Now Vol.4
The Meeting Place of Unveiled Worlds

Madge Gill is recognised as Britain’s most famous female outsider artist. Her distinctive ink drawings, featuring mysterious female faces floating within intricately patterned backgrounds, began in 1920, driven by an instinctive compulsion to create. She believed she was guided by a spirit named ‘Myrninerest,’ resulting in a prolific outpouring of mediumistic art produced automatically. Gill worked on a range of mediums, from vast swathes of calico to postcards and pieces of cardboard.

Andrew Johnstone’s passion for drawing was nurtured from a very young age by his family. Drawing was also very important as it was a means by which the family communicated with Johnstone, for example by depicting people or places that they were going to visit. Johnstone works in a precise and deliberate way through drawing and ceramics. He often depicts animals and events, with a focus on things he has seen in-person or online.

Cara Macwilliam is a multi-disciplinary artist who is fascinated with energy; from the physical and emotional, to the metaphysical. Her pieces capture the marks of ephemeral entities, energies and the otherworldly. The different styles produced are led by the materials used, each one has a distinctive voice and flow. The works are often layered and intricate but always pulling from intuition and unseen forces. Automatism is her preferred process.

Although always creative, Margate based Valerie Potter, did not consider herself an art-maker. At 19, Potter enrolled at a UK art school, but found it restrictive and left, continuing her drawing at home. Her cross-stitch work often ties together faces, animals, plants, and love with non-religious gods. An abstract idea pops into Potter’s head (like a flower from the planet Mars), and after drawing it out in pencil, she takes her time cross-stitching it in wild bright colours.

Cathy Ward was sent, as a child, to a private convent run by the Irish order of The Sisters of Mercy. This experience had a profound and lasting effect on her and her work. After graduating from the RCA, a life changing spell in Canada was spiritually and creatively transformative, before returning to London. She is recognised for her intense ethereal drawings interpreted as hair, strata, and energy pulses.

London based gay artist and educator Terence Wilde gained a degree in textiles but retrained through Croydon's voluntary mental health services. Wilde draws on his own mental health journey, from the perspective of an adult survivor, in all his black and white works. Working mainly in line drawing or ceramic, Wilde describes his works as responses to different periods in his life, showing struggles, fears, and dreams.

Robert ‘Scottie’ Wilson emigrated to Toronto in 1931 from Glasgow. He started to draw during the 1930’s developing a very intense style ink drawing of dream-like creatures such as swans, birds, fish, trees and flowers. In early in 1945 he returned to London, and continued this practice, although he was quickly taken up by London’s Surrealists. Wilson relied on a relatively narrow range of visual elements – botanical forms, birds and animals, clowns (self-portraits), and ‘Greedies’ and ‘Evils’ (malignant personifications).