First published: Summer 2022
Sophie Dutton examines one of the London artist’s many inked postcards.
No name, no title, no date. This delicately painted postcard has no written attribute to its creator. However, its unmistakable free-flowing style and modest medium tells us that it is, without doubt, the work of one of Britain’s foremost visionary and self-taught artists – Madge Gill (1882–1961).
Untitled, c. 1930–1954, ink on postcard, 3.5 × 5.5 in. / 8.5 x 13.5 cm,
courtesy: Newham Council’s Heritage Service
The East London artist is known to have created over a hundred postcards in a single evening. The works are repetitive in nature but at the same time each one is unique. In this piece, Gill’s unrestrained mark-making ebbs and flows between the intricate pen detailing of her subject’s puckered lips and mesmeric eyes, to the sketched flourishes of her hat and expressive washes of colour.
By SOPHIE DUTTON
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #111
