SOUL WORK: IN HER COMPLEX “DRAWINKS,” THE ARTIST JUDITH McNICOL PLUMBS THE DEPTHS OF THE PSYCHE

A SELF-TAUGHT, LONDON-BASED CREATOR OF INTRIGUING, DEEPLY PERSONAL IMAGES HAS DISCOVERED HER TRUE SELF, AIDED BY HER ART-MAKING

Published on May 30, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

LONDON — brutjournal readers first met the artist Judith McNicol in our London-based artist-correspondent Cathy Ward’s August 2022 profile of this creator of drawings and mixed-media assemblage works. Later, that in-depth, photo-filled report about McNicol’s ideas and artistic trajectory was republished, in print, in the first volume of the brutjournal annual (2021-2022 edition).

The British artist Judith McNicol with one of her large-format “drawinks” at the College of Psychic Studies, London, January 2025. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

In that earlier article, Cathy wrote, “In 2001, I met Judith McNicol by chance at Artesian Arts, a gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, that was run as a collective by a group of artists whose wide-open welcome was democratic in spirit and who published Artesian, a quarterly magazine whose tag line stated, ‘Upwelling Art and Creativity, the Voice of Scotland’s Grassroots Arts.’ Judith was Artesian Arts’ founder. Along with a core group of fellow artists, the venue they established encouraged art-makers and other contributors to show their work there, expressing themselves with unrestricted freedom.”