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Louis Freeman, known as Scottie Wilson |
MELLY (George). It's all writ out for you. The Life and Work of Scottie Wilson, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986.
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| Scottie's parents emigrate from Lithuania to Glasgow in the second half of the 19th century. Scottie is not schooled, cannot read or write, but can still decipher newspaper titles and write his name. In order to help his family, he starts selling newspapers at the age of ten, wearing no shoes. In 1906, he joins the army, serving in India and South Africa. He comes back to England, works in street fairs and markets in London. He deserts the army after being sent to Ireland, flees to Canada, and sells odds and ends in Toronto. | ||
| At the age of forty, he is intrigued by drawing. Pen in hand, he spends hours in the back of his shop, listening to Mendelssohn. His drawings are first in black and white ink, later in color. His favorite subjects are self-portraits with big noses (with always a latent melancholy and anxiety), and also fish, birds, trees and other strange figures. Back in England, Scottie gives away his drawings or sells them for very little money at street fairs. He organizes small exhibitions in movie theaters or in empty trailers. A surrealistic poet gives him a show in London, but when Scottie sees the prices of his works, he settles in front of the gallery and sells his drawings for a few pennies: "I don't see why they can't sell their pictures for what they want and I sell them for what I want." | ||
| In the final part of his work, he stages a combat between the Good and the Evil, which he calls the "Greedies" and the "Evils", a series of totems on a black background, symbols of this fight. | ||
| The demons have faces that look like monstrous, hybrid and carnivorous birds. In some drawings, he includes a frightened and anguished face with the same big nose. Scottie dies at the age of eighty-four; his works will be purchased by Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, André Breton and other collectors. | ||
| SEE ALSO: Publications de la Compagnie de
l'Art Brut, fascicule 4, text of Victor Musgrave, Paris, 1965. MELLY (George). It's all writ out for you. The Life and Work of Scottie Wilson, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986. |
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