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Madge GillBorn in London in 1884, Madge Gill was an illegitimate child brought up in children's homes and later by a spiritualist aunt. She married in 1907 and had four children, two of whom died. It was her attempts as a medium to make contact with them 'on the other side' that lead to her overwhelming compulsion to create hundreds of elaborate ink drawings. She said she was guided by a spirit called Myrinest (probably a rendering of 'mine innerest self'). She died aged 77.
Works by Gill were included in England & Co's 2001 exhibition Obsessive Visions: Art Outside the Mainstream. In 2008, she was one of the artists chosen for the major exhibition of British Outsider Art at Musée La Halle Saint Pierre in Paris.
