Black Sheep Gallery - Folk, Outsider and Self-taught Art

Welcome to September. We hope everyone is enjoying the Labour Day weekend.

We have gathered together some great art from Canada and the United States to show you in our update.

We purchased the “Minnie Herd” directly from Minnie Adkins when we visited her in Happy Gizzard Holler in 2001. It is located in a beautiful part of Kentucky and Minnie, who was at that time married to Herman Peters, was a delight to meet. Her work is in many permanent collections including the Smithsonian Museum of Art. Minnie recently celebrated her 86th birthday. It has been reported that she is no longer carving, but has taken up painting.

We didn’t get the opportunity to meet Sybil Gibson, who passed away in 1995. At the age of fifty-five Sybil started creating her own wrapping paper designs using brown paper grocery bags. Her paintings have a fragile dream like quality and her vase with blue flowers will take your breath away. Unfortunately a lot of Sybil’s work was lost due to neglect.

Alpha Andrews was born in the state of Georgia in 1932. She liked to work with vivid colours and geometric repetitive patterns with gold paint and glitter accents. One of her paintings was featured on the back cover of Rosenak’s “Collector’s Guide to American Folk Art”. Her work has been included in many permanent collections including the American Folk Art Museum. We are pleased to include two of her paintings on the web site.

In the Canadian section of the gallery we have included a Mountie by Ransford Naugler. The enormous hands of this fellow certainly give the impression that you are safe while he is on duty.

The small diamond shaped painting by David Stephens of a lighthouse perched on a rock near the shore is called "Joyous Island Nights".

We have added a biography for Murray Eisnor. Murray was a quiet family man who sold his carvings at the side of the road beside his house in Martins River, and this is where we purchased this speckled fish. His brother Elmer lived close by and was also a well known carver. Unfortunately they are both gone now.

Scott Higgins carvings are generally whimsical, but sometimes make serious political statements, such as his series in honor of the Holocaust, and his tribute to the 26 miners who died in the Westray mine disaster. We have added two of his pieces, “Scraping Bottom” and “Good Times” for your consideration.

Stay safe everyone.