Gregory Blackstock began drawing regularly in his mid-40s, cataloguing the world around him just as a botanist might classify plants in terms of families, species and genus, or an entomologist might arrange the various types of insects within his collection. The artist, who was autistic, had a prodigious memory for visual objects, musical tone and compositions, and foreign languages. As a “prodigious savant,” his need to make sense of and define an unpredictable world was given the most deeply satisfying outlet in his art.  

For Blackstock, the world was made up of countless things which needed to be identified, ordered, and arranged. One thing or another was seemingly of no greater weight but, once he decided to draw the chosen subject, he sought to record all of the specific variations within that  group.

This exhibition features a selection of drawings and prints reflecting the range of the artist’s oeuvre. Images taken from his taxonomies of the natural world (birds, animals, insects, plants, “weathers”) are seen in context with his encyclopedic view of the manmade world (clothing, cars, buildings, tools) to create the macrocosm which is Blackstock’s world.

Biography

Blackstock was born in Seattle in 1946. His first solo exhibition in Seattle was at Garde Rail Gallery in 2004. In 2011, the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland curated a solo exhibition of Blackstock’s work and holds 15 of his works in its permanent collection.

Drawings by Blackstock have been shown or are included in the collections of the several art museums around the USA, including Seattle Art Museum and Blanton Museum at University of Texas, Austin. He has been featured at several art fairs, including the Outsider Fair, New York and Paris. Blackstock was awarded 2017 Wynn Newhouse Foundation award. The Wynn Foundation grants annual awards to an artist of exceptional merit with a disability. The artist died in 2023.