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

Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends.

This month we have added three depictions of the Statue of Liberty or Liberté éclairant le monde: Liberty Enlightening the World. The statue is indeed an enigmatic monument, speaking at once to rich and poor, established and marginal, men and women.

Bertha Halozan boldly paints WE LOVE STATUE OF LIBERTY across the top of her painting with the Goodyear blimp floating over an Austrian village and a New York Mets baseball player, along with an assortment of birds and animals in the foreground. This is much larger than the small paintings she sold on the streets of New York. We had the privilege of visiting with Bertha a few times and she was always a delight.

The late Levent Isik’s fanciful representation of the Statue of Liberty is brightly coloured with high gloss enamels and a delightful black and white striped frame, all distinctly Levent’s work.

Carl McKenzie from Kentucky is one of our favorite U.S. outsider artists. His carving of the Statue of Liberty is almost regal, no use of splotches of paint like some of his other carvings, but rather a rich red shade, with the torch held high over her head.

Cecil Mason was born in 1919 and worked at a local fish plant as a trimmer and weigher for 45 years. Although untrained, he was a gifted carver. Cecil loved to carve small figures using old tools from the fish plant which he brought home and filed down for his own use. He loved the sport of boxing and many of his carvings were of boxers. Teddy Yarosz, the subject of one of Cecil’s carvings we are featuring this month, was arguably the world’s best middleweight boxer of the 1930s. Yarosz did it all while maintaining a reputation as an honorable man of impeccable character, bringing great pride to the Polish American community. We also have a carving of a gentleman in a grey topcoat with walking stick by Cecil.

The wonderful robin by Sid Howard is one of his best. As I look at it I can hear him singing Little Robin Red Breast, which he sang in the documentary, “Folk Art Found Me”. You can also hear him singing it in the documentary if you click here.

And finally some sad news. We lost Stanley Rector in May of this year. We always enjoyed our visits with Stanley and his father Tom. We hope you enjoy his wonderful carving of a wedding couple.

In the latest new book about Maud Lewis Brighten the Corner Where You Are, Carol Bruneau imagines Maud Lewis narrating her own story. According to the review by Quill & Quire “Lewis is presented as a woman of strength and sass, a chain-smoker who detested being seen as a victim (even when she clearly was), and who desired romance and simple pleasures. But perhaps most importantly, it is clear that Bruneau respects Lewis as an artist and a human. Brighten the Corner Where You Are is a welcome addition to the Lewis legacy.”

Stay safe everyone.