Madge gill outsider artist raymond burr

Madge Gill was an outstanding exponent of mediumistic art and remains one of the foremost British Outsider artists. She was born in the East End of London, where she spent the greater part of her life.

Madge Gill () was an outstanding exponent of mediumistic art and remains one of the foremost British Outsider artists.

Her birth certificate bears the name Maude Ethel Eades alongside that of her mother, Emma Eades, yet lacks all mention of a father. Given the opprobrium attaching in Victorian times to an illegitimate birth, Madge spent her early childhood sequestered from the world, brought up by her mother and Carrie, her aunt, under the strict eye of her grandfather.

Five years later, she was transported by ship to Canada with hundreds of other juveniles, beneficiaries of a large-scale child-labour scheme devised by the orphanage to offer youngsters a fresh start in the New World. The teenaged Madge became a domestic servant and babysitter on a series of Ontario farms. Records show that it was common for such young immigrants to be maltreated, and there is little doubt that Madge nourished a fervent longing to return to England.

At the age of eighteen, she succeeded in re-crossing the Atlantic and, once back in London, found work as a nurse at Whipps Cross hospital, Leytonstone. For a while she lived with her aunt Kate, who introduced her to Spiritualism and mediumistic practices. The marriage turned out badly, and relations became unpleasant. Within six years, Madge gave birth to three sons, Laurie, Reggie and Bob; the second boy died in the influenza pandemic of A year later, Madge gave birth for the last time, but her longed-for daughter was stillborn, her body perfect but for a disfigurement down one side.

There is no record of any name being given to this child. Madge herself came close to death, and a subsequent lengthy illness resulted in the loss of her left eye, which was replaced with a glass one.

Madge Gill, like many outsider artists, has continually been gaining fame since her death in Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, one of the central venues for the exhibition and support of outsider art.

Madge was now thirty-eight, and her contact with this phantom figure would be maintained without interruption throughout the rest of her life. He evokes a whole gamut of creative modes at that time: drawing, writing, knitting, crochet-work, weaving, piano-playing. All this took place under the auspices of Myrninerest, whose signature appeared regularly on the drawings.