GARDEN WALL
Elizabeth Gurrier
Hollis, New Hampshire
1983
Unbleached cotton muslin, silk thread, polyester fiber batting and fill; stuffed, machine stitched and hand embroidered
37 x 28 inches
Note: This work is signed by the artist.

Are those caterpillars?

"Historically, rich detail and exquisite workmanship were hallmarks of the all-white quilt. Elizabeth Gurrier carried on this tradition in innovative pieces...[that] push stuffed work to its limit as soft sculpture."
—Michael James

"Part of the shock in Elizabeth Gurrier’s work comes from her medium. She creates all of her pieces from fine, unbleached muslin, and uses quilting (often by machine stitching) and trapunto to create texture, light and shade. Only the faces have colour, embroidered or dusted on in the softest of blending shades.

"The effect of this pure white medium is to make our everyday world, where pillows and handbags and quilts are useful objects, into a world of pure form. Gurrier sees the world as white space. What is alive and vital, Gurrier’s pieces tell us, is the world of the faces, the Anima, peering through in ancient judgment from behind the Form. The faces are disturbing for several reasons. First, allowing for subtle differences of expression or variation for sex, it is always the same face. One spirit stares at us over and over again. The face has ancient knowledge, an old Celt face our forefathers would have recognized in the fens of Britain, the mists of Norway, or the mountains of Germany. Usually the face, surrounded by fuzzy, grizzled hair, is female, old in its wrinkles and pouches, with a prominent beak nose, sensual chiseled mouth, and large, alive eyes with down-drooping corners. Its gaze is not malevolent—there is no passion of any kind in the faces—but it stares and judges.

"Gurrier’s work reveals the same Anima known by the medieval cathedral workmen who broke the perfection of gothic pillars with images of little faces from the old religion, peering through. Her affinity with the ancient carvers is acknowledged in the form as well as the spirit of her pieces."
—Jo Anne Claus, Saint John Telegraph Journal, Canada

$2500

Contact Robert Shaw for more information or to purchase