Madge Gill’s mother long concealed the circumstances of her illegitimate birth, entrusting her to an aunt and grandmother who raised her in near seclusion in London’s East End. At the age of nine, she was placed in an orphanage.
In 1903, after training as a nurse, Gill discovered spiritualism and astrology through her aunt. Four years later, she married a cousin who had also been born out of wedlock. Her life was soon marked by the loss of two children. In 1919, a serious illness caused her to lose her left eye. She then devoted herself entirely to drawing and to communicating with “Myrninerest,” the spirit she believed inspired her writings, embroideries, and piano improvisations. Working in the darkness by candle light, she produced thousands of drawings—ranging from a few centimeters to more than eleven meters in length—in which the same feminine face repeatedly appears, within intricate architectural and abstract patterns.
Always signing her works with the name Myrninerest, she refused to sell them but agreed to exhibit them: first in 1932 with amateur artists from the East End, and later, between 1939 and 1947, at the Whitechapel Gallery. Another bereavement in 1958 plunged her into alcoholism and led her to stop drawing.
Her son Laurie devotedly cared for her and ensured the preservation of her work.