Outsider Art Fair, New York – January 19-22, 2017 A week ago, between the jet lag and long coffee, I went to the Outsider Art Fair which turns 25 this year, like me. Founded by Sanford L. Smith, to its beginnings it counted 25 exhibitors. Now there were 66 galleries from 9 countries.Unlike the beginning, now […]
DAMIAN MICHAELS
DAMIAN MICHAELS(1969 | USA – AUSTRALIA) Damian Michaels was born in Virginia in 1969, his earliest years were nomadic owing to the demands of his father’s job. In the mid-1970s the family settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the age of eight, Michaels experienced his first epiphany, in the form of a visitation […]
BESSIE HARVEY
BESSIE HARVEY(1929-1994 | AMERICA) Bessie Harvey was a visionary artist who flourished primarily in Alcoa, Tenesse, during 1979-1994. Born in Dallas, Georgia, Harvey was the seventh of thirteen children and she experienced a very difficult childhood. Drawing strength from her mother’s strong Christian faith, she also fond comfort in her own ability to create works […]
SALVATION MOUNTAIN
SALVATION MOUNTAINLEONARD KNIGHT(1931-2014) | USA Leonard Knight began painting and creating his Salvation Mountain after a failed attempt to fly the world’s largest balloon, which he had spent ten years trying to make. Knight decided to stay on in the launch area, in a part of the desert known as “Slab City”. Using hundreds of […]
EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN
EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN(1910-1983 | USA) Eugene von Bruenchenhein was born and grew up in Marinette (Wisconsin), where he spent most of his working life employed in a bakery. Ever hopeful of success, the self-taught artist developed his own unique painting technique: using his fingers to rapidly manipulate the thin wet oil paint, he created magical swirls […]
PEARL FRYAR TOPIARY GARDEN
Working from his imagination, Fryar coaxed over 100 specimens of more than 20 different trees and plants, including holly, yew and juniper, into fantastic shapes, hearts, animals and abstract forms.
THE MINDFIELD
THE MINDFIELDBILLY TRIPP(1955 | USA) William Blevins (Billy) Tripp, born 1955 in Jackson, Tennessee, is a nationally known practitioner of outsider art as well as the author of numerous poems and a novel, “The Mindfield Years”, published in 1996.He’s the creator of “The Mindfield”, the largest work in progress and outdoor sculpture in Tennessee. The […]
J.J. CROMER
J.J.CROMER(1967 | USA) The self-taught artist J.J. Cromer, born in 1967, spent most of his life in central Appalachia. Now he live on a small farm in Pound, Virginia, where he raise ducks and geese with his wife. He had a master’s degree in creative writing and he worked as a librarian.From 1998, frustrated with […]
GREGORY L. BLACKSTOCK
GREGORY L. BLACKSTOCK (1946 | USA) The Seattle autistic artist Gregory L. Blackstock began drawing regularly in his mid-40s, studying the world around his like an anthropologist. He has a prodigious memory for visual objects, musical tone and compositions, and foreign languages. He learns of his world by replicating it, subject by subject, piece by […]