Scottie Wilson was a self-taught Scottish-Jewish Outsider artist, born Louis Freeman in 1888 in Glasgow, Scotland, and renowned for his intricate and symbolic drawings. Although his work developed independently of formal art movements, his contribution is increasingly recognised within the broader narrative of Modern British Art, particularly for the way it challenged conventional boundaries of artistic expression.
In the 1930s, while operating a second-hand shop in Toronto, Canada, he began creating art, often using pen and ink to produce detailed works featuring recurring motifs such as birds, fish and totem-like figures. His compositions frequently juxtaposed benevolent symbols with malevolent ones he termed ‘evils and greedies,’ reflecting a personal moral code.
It was during this period, before his return to London in 1945, that his unique style garnered attention, and in 1943 he held his first solo exhibition in Toronto. He recalled the origins of his profession in typically dramatic style:
“[I found a pen that] . . . looked like a bulldog, with a nib as thick as my finger! 14ct gold it was and so unusual, so striking that I said I’m going to keep this pen. I didn’t want to break up the bulldog pen with its nib so thick and beautiful. So I kept it. I took my shop in Young [sic] Street. A general store it was, and a few days after opening the shop I bought a large table with a thick cardboard top on which to stand my radio. I’m listening to classical music one day – Mendelssohn – when all of a sudden I dipped the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink and started drawing – doodling I suppose you’d call it – on the cardboard table-top. I don’t know why. I just did. In a couple of days – I worked almost ceaselessly – the whole of the table-top was covered with little faces and designs. The pen seemed to make me draw and the images, the faces and designs just flowed out. I couldn’t stop – I’ve never stopped since that day.” (Quoted in Marzolf, Helen, Scottie Wilson: The Canadian Drawings , Dunlop Art Gallery, 1989, p. 8.)
This significant collection of early drawings reveals most of the major motifs that Wilson would develop throughout his career, including the organisational structure in his drawing and hatching techniques. Small human-like faces, peculiar reptilian forms, insects, fish, alongside stylised flowers,
vegetation, trees and imaginative and fanciful architecture all inhabit Wlson’s particular visual world.
During his lifetime Wilson’s unique drawings drew the attention Surrealist artists and were collected by Jean Dubuffet and Pablo Picasso. Decades after his death, he is celebrated as one of the classic Outsider artists. In 1989, the Dunlop Art Gallery in Saskatchewan organized a retrospective titled ‘Scottie Wilson: The Canadian Drawings/Les Dessins Canadiens,’ highlighting his contributions during his time in Canada. His work is now held in prestigious collections including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Tate Britain in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, underscoring his lasting impact on the art world.
