Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Joseph Yoakum was an American naive artist. His father was a Cherokee Indian and his mother was a former slave of French, African and Native American descent. He left home at the age of nine to join the circus and worked his way up from a horse groomer to an advance man position. The advance men held remarkable navigational knowledge and were usually two weeks ahead of the circus, raising awareness before the show came into town. In adulthood as well as working in the Circus he fought in WWI. After the death of his second wife and at the age of 76 Joseph Yoakum began to reminisce on the landscapes he had witnessed from a nomadic life of travel. He represented this through the medium of drawing, working from his memories alone.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Antonio Ligabue was born in Switzerland. His mother and brother died of food poisoning when he was young and Ligabue became a foster child. After a violent outburst against his foster mother he was deported to Italy. Despite his assumed Italian origin he couldn’t speak a word of Italian and after numerous failed attempts to get back to Switzerland he began living in a primitive hut on the banks of the river Po. A lifetime of ill-fated human relationships forced an already isolated Ligabue to seek refuge with animals. He became known locally as the madman and could be heard mimicking the sounds and communicating with his large array of pets that followed him wherever he went. Inspired by his companions he began to create animal sculpting’s using clay from the river Po and soon afterwards began to paint eventually being dubbed the ‘Italian Van Gogh’ for his remarkable body of work.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Horrace Pippin was a naive artist who was part of the African-American 369th infantry also known as the Harlem hell fighters that fought in the trenches in WWI. During the war he was shot in the shoulder and lost the use of his right arm. Over the following years he struggled with his disability and as way of expressing himself began scoring wood with a hot poker as a way of drawing. He did this by clutching a brush with his right hand and using his left arm to steer his injured arm across the canvas. As Pippin explained in his letters and notebooks “The war brought out all the art in me”.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Howard Finster was born in Alabama. He was one of 13 children and experienced his fist vision at the age of three, when he saw his sister who had recently died wearing a white gown walking down a ladder from the sky. He began preaching at the age of 16. After getting married and having children He purchased a piece of land in rural Georgia to create a church and roadside attraction to support his young family. This became known as the ‘Paradise Garden’. Here Finster established himself as Americas most famous folk artist and he even painted album covers for Talking Heads and REM. During his lifetime he made over 46,000 works of art
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Aloïse Corbaz was born in Switzerland and was raised predominantly by her older sister who in sent her to live in Germany to work as a teacher. Later she began working as a governess for the children of the emperor Wilhelm II. She soon became infatuated with the emperor and experienced extreme delusions and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a psychiatric hospital where she first began making art. With her new found purpose she began to write and create images expressing her fantasies of impossible love between Kings and Queens and mythical couples using crayons, pencils, toothpaste, flower juice and anything else that she could find.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
William Edmondson was an African American who’s mother and father were ex-slaves. Ever since Edmondson was a child he had experienced religious visions in which he believed he had spoken to God. In one of his visions God had ordered him to pick up his tools and to start calving a tombstone. At the time cemeteries were segregated and the black community struggled to afford respectable tombstones. He also carved garden ornaments inspired by animals and ordinary people in the street. Knowledge of his work spread and in 1937 he became the first black artist to have a solo show at the museum of modern art in New York. He never considered himself an artist and said “I’se just doin’ the lords work. I didn’t know I was no artists till them folks told me I was”.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Charles Bronson was born in Luton, England. He was a troublesome child and had many encounters with the law. At the age of 22 he was arrested for armed robbery after stealing £26.18 from a post office. He was sentenced to seven years in prison but his sentence was increased after attacking fellow inmates and prison officers whilst inside. Due to years of darkness in solitary confinement Bronson’s eyesight has deteriorated and become so sensitive to natural light that he wears tinted glasses for his eyes to function properly. As well as being known as Britain’s most violent prisoner Bronson has also become known for his art. He is an award winning artist, poet and author . Bronson credits his art for keeping him sane “My art has been my saviour. When I draw I am not in a prison cell. I am somewhere else”.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Daniel Johnson is an American artist and musician. At the age of eight he began creating comic strips and playing the piano. After graduating from high school in 1979 he studied art but was forced to quit after manic depression first surfaced. Through fear of being committed, he ran away from home and joined a travelling carnival. After several months of carnival life he arrived in Austin, Texas and decided to stay behind and immerse himself in the local comic book and music scene. After quickly gaining local notoriety and even performing live on MTV, his mental health again began to decline and after a string of violent attacks he was committed to an asylum. He has since been released and His health remains fragile but Johnson is still a great creative force. His name is internationally-renowned both in the world of art and music.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern was born on the German-Russian border and spent his early years in and out of reformation schools as a result of his involvement with petty crime. From a young age he developed a deep hatred for authority and in his mid-teens, after a violent reaction to an accusation of theft was incarcerated for five months in a lunatic asylum. During this time he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Over the following years he found himself in and out of a number of psychiatric institutions and prisons where he first took an interest in painting and drawing. He would do this with the application of washes of paint and coloured pencils to depict mythical worlds lined with grotesque characters, monsters and animals often engaging in sadistic behavior with oversized sexual organs.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein was an American artist. His mother died when he was just 7 years old and his father re-married a schoolteacher who introduced Von Bruenchenhein to the world of art and literature. At the age of 29 he met his wife to be. The couple married and began a life of artistic solitude. Amateur photography became Von Bruenchenhein first creative calling when he set up a makeshift darkroom and began to photograph his wife in intimate and erotic poses. Despite no recognition in his lifetime Von Bruenchenhein was confident of his artistic abilities and celebrated his talents with a handmade golden plaque that read ‘Freelance Artist—Poet and Sculptor—Inovator—Arrow maker and Plant man—Bone artifacts constructor—Photographer and Architect—Philosopher’.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Scottie Wilson was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He left school as a young child to contribute to the income of his poverty stricken family leaving him near illiterate. He worked as a paperboy, market trader and fought on the western front during WWI. After his military service he changed his name and in search of a fresh start immigrated to Canada where he ran a junk shop in Toronto. It was from there that he discovered what he described as a fascinating pen which inspired him to spend the next two days covering the surface of a tabletop with intuitive visionary drawings of faces, creatures and organic shapes. As he said himself ‘ I couldn’t stop – I’ve never stopped since that day’.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Carlo Zinelli was born in Italy. His mother died when he was just 2 years old and his father was a carpenter struggled to support Zinelli and his seven brothers and sisters. In adulthood Zinelli fought in the Spanish civil war and was part of the Alpini mountain infantry. During his military service his underlying mental condition first came to light and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a result of his diagnosis he spent the majority of his life in a mental institution where his speech deteriorates and Zinelli first found his new voice when he picked up a stone in the outside courtyard and began to draw with it by scratching in to walls. The process soothed him and an artist studio was built for him on site. With a new way to communicate Zinelli worked obsessively and created over 3,000 works of art in his lifetime.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Alfred Wallis was born in Cornwall. His mother died at a young age and he left school to start work. In 1876 Wallis married a widow who was 23 years his senior and settled in the town of St Ives. After the death of his wife and now alone Wallis began painting local scenes and was particularly interested in fishing boats. Wallace was a troubled man, who worsened with age. After the discovery of his work by the London art scene, he grew suspicious of the locals and believed they resented him and his success. In his latter years neighbours overheard him arguing with what he thought were spirits. He spent the remaining 14 months of his life in a mental institution where he continued to paint up until his death in 1942.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Alexander Lobanov was born in Mologa, Russia. At the age of seven he contracted meningitis and was left deaf and mute and attended a specialist school as a result of his condition. In 1939 the evacuation of his hometown began, as Mologa was to be submerged and to become the Rybinsk reservoir. Around this time Lobanov soon became aggressive and violent and after the closing of his school due to the breakout of WWII his condition worsened further. He was first omitted into a psychiatric ward at the age of twenty-three and first started to carefully copy images with a pencil. He soon began to make collages and create work of remarkable originality. His images consisted of hunting scenes and self-portraits inspired by communist propaganda.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Bill Traylor was an African-American born in to slavery. He worked for most of his life on the same plantation and remained there after the civil war. He continued to work on the fields following the war, but this time working his own land with his wife and nine children. At the age of 82 with all his children having left home and the death of his wife, Traylor relocated to the back room of a funeral home in the town of Montgomery and took a job in a shoe factory. Plagued with rheumatism he was forced to quit and relied on government cheques to support himself. With the pressure of work no longer consuming his time, Traylor began to obsessively draw on scraps of cardboard, inspired by the people around him as well as his memories of the plantation. It became an everyday occurrence for the locals to see Traylor sitting on a box making his drawings.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Nikifor was born in Krynica, Poland. His mother raised him alone working as a beggar and prostitute. In his early life he was often ridiculed and humiliated for an undiagnosed birth defect that meant his tongue was attached to the roof of his mouth. In 1915 on scraps of found material Nikifor began to paint religious scenes and local buildings, his painting soon became his currency for survival. He was of Lemko origin and in 1947 was targeted by the ethnical cleansing operation Vistula, this targeted Poland’s Ukrainian minorities and forced them into resettlement. Nikifor attempted to return to his native town of Krynica on three occasions, being deported twice and allowed to stay by authorities on his third attempt. Through years of homelessness, struggle and the infection of tuberculosis Nikifor continued to paint and received international acclaim for his efforts.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Adolf Wölfli was born in Switzerland. His father was a stonecutter, alcoholic and criminal who walked out on the family when Wölfli was just 6 years old. His mother struggled to cope and Wölfli became an orphan where he worked as a goat-header and farmers servant. He was forced to live in extreme poverty and was brutalised and became a troubled individual in adulthood. After the attempted assault of three young children he was committed to an asylum and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Whilst incarcerated, Wölfli was often violent and experienced hallucinations and spent most of his time in isolation. In 1899 Wölfli began to draw spontaneously and began a 31 year period of channeling his schizophrenic condition into the creation of art.
Oil on Canvas - 25cm X 20cm
Ferdinand Cheval was a rural French postman who inspired by a dream built a palace in his back garden. He collected rocks and stones that he found on his long gruelling postal rounds that he used as building material. He devoted 30 years of his life to making his dream a reality and in 1912 the Palais Ideal (The Ideal palace)was completed. In his own words “everything you can see, passer by is the work of one peasant. Who, out of dream, created the queen of the world. Cheval had intended to be buried within the palace but when local authorities rejected the idea at the age of 80 he began to build again. This time he started work in his local graveyard where he successfully built his own tomb where he was layer to rest after his death in 1924.