Outsider art often grows on me slowly. I enjoy this fact, and wonder if it’s about at the distance in mindset involved – between the artist’s and mine. These dolls are examples of pieces that have been growing on me recently. They appeared in last year’s exhibition of works from the Peter Fay collection at the Callan Park Gallery.
There’s information on Val Sutherland at the NZ Self-taught and Visionary site. And a nice piece in Art News New Zealand:
Working in a world of their own, with their own personal motivations, many outsider artists express surprise when others recognise the quality of their work. Interest in her work certainly surprised Val Sutherland, a mother, grandmother and care-giver whose doll making caught the eye of Australian collector Peter Fay … who visited Masterton’s King Street Artworks in 1998. Sutherland was a helper and participant in some King Street Artworks workshop activities.
Loving the vulnerability and innocence of her doll characters, Fay bought all of them. And Sutherland’s reaction? She thought he must have been totally crazy! Now, eight years later, interest in her work has grown with exhibitions in Australia, including a 2005/2006 solo exhibition touring to Wollongong City Gallery and Campbelltown Arts Centre in New South Wales.
These are works that quietly state their innocence, make no fuss, have their own integrity and conform to their own rules (like how the limbs are connected with buttons). No nonsense creatures – I like that.
