james edward deeds :

This utterly ruined life would have remained unknown to us had Deeds not recorded it by drawing on the pages of a hospital register; and if, in the 1970s, a teenager hadn’t rescued the faded leather-bound volume from a rubbish bin.

It would take 40 years for its contents to be exhibited in New York and then in Paris, in our gallery, and to become the subject of a catalogue raisonné. These 140 double-sided plates, still anonymous, immediately had a major impact, made a great impression, which was echoed in the New York Times and Art in America.

The artist at the time known only by his code name, Electric Pencil – because of the appearance, on several drawings, of the words “Ectlectric (sic) Pencil” – was then cloaked in mystery, which the infatuated art world would eventually lift when it was discovered that the spelling of Ectlectric wasn’t a mistake, but rather a clue to the particular context in which the works had come into being: ECT standing for ElectroConvulsive Therapy.

The contrast with Deeds’ work is all the more striking. First, with his style, which is extremely delicate, with a remarkable precision of line, but also with the nostalgic and old-fashioned themes: a charming bestiary, Edenic nature, steamboats sailing up the Missouri River, a gallery of portraits from a bygone era… A somewhat hallucinatory family portrait, with bulging eyes interrogates us, seeming to emerge from the paper as if calling us to witness.

Thus, these drawings of great rarity form the vibrant lament of a man broken, but saved by his creation, saved by the “sincere and serious gaze” evoked by Gaston Bachelard: “Things return gazes. They seem indifferent to us because we see them with an indifferent eye. But for a clear eye, everything is a mirror. For a sincere, serious gaze, everything is depth.”