The labyrinthine works of Ann Churchill: Jacqui McIntosh The creative output of Ann Churchill (b. 1944) spans over fifty years. This incredible, ongoing body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, beading, knitting and more has, until recently, been largely unseen beyond family and friends. Through her inclusion in shows such as the Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium (2020–22) and her recent exhibition at Quench Gallery in Margate (2023), her extraordinary work is finally finding the audience it deserves. This newfound recognition comes at a time of increased interest in the work and lives of artists such as Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Georgiana Houghton (1814–84), Madge Gill (1882–1961) and Ithell Colquhoun (1906–88) – artists whose output during their lifetime was either completely unknown or who sat at the fringes of an art historical canon not quite ready to embrace their esoteric and spiritual vision. Like Churchill, these were women who placed automatism at the centre of their practices and whose spiritual and artistic development was intertwined. For Churchill, life and making have always been interconnected. Her early black and white ‘daily drawings’, drawn using the finest-tipped Rotring ink pens, were made in the short hours whilst her youngest child napped. As her children absorbed more and more of her time, she worked on larger ink pieces that she could stop and start when she had moments to herself. Full of vibrant colour, these intensely worked pieces (made from the mid-1970s onwards) are endlessly fascinating Ann Churchill, Octagonal Drawing, 1976, Ink on paper, 55.6 x 56 cm
to view, filled with passage after passage of intricate, labyrinthine and abstracted patterns. Like the virtuosic whiplash line created by Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98), Churchill’s drawing weaves and coils, following an energetic flow which takes the eye from form to form. These incredible works on paper were made without planning or preparatory drawing, emerging instead from the subtle interplay between the hand and the unconscious mind. 16
