Collection

About the Artist
Gladwyn K. “Miss Lassie” Bush

1914–2003

A fourth-generation Caymanian, Gladwyn K. “Miss Lassie” Bush was a self-taught artist who began painting at the age of 62 following a visionary experience. Her work, which she referred to as her “markings”, is executed in a naïve style reflecting her status as an intuitive, self-taught artist. Strong Christian themes run through her art, which she not only painted on canvas, but also on the walls, windows, and furnishings of her home. Miss Lassie’s work was included in the 1995 Carib Art international traveling exhibition and is profiled in several books on intuitive art worldwide, including Raw Creation (Phaidon Press, 1996), Caribbean Art (Thames & Hudson, 1998), Fantasy Worlds (Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1999), and My Markings: The Art of Gladwyn K. Bush (CNCF, 1994). Her work is in private and public collections, most notably that of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. In her lifetime, the artist was honoured as a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1997 and received a CNCF Heritage Award in 1993 as well as the Excellence Award in 1999. Her home, in Grand Cayman, was added to the World Heritage Watch List in 2012. NGCI exhibitions include a solo show Prayer Canvases in 2012, Mediating Self (2017), and Tropical Visions (2019).