Outsider Art
Minnie Eva Evans was an African American artist who worked in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. Evans used different types of media in her work such as oils and graphite, but started with using wax and crayon. She was inspired to start drawing due to visions and dreams that she had all throughout her life, starting when she was a young girl. She is known as a southern folk artist and outsider artist as well as a surrealist and visionary artist.
Thomas "Sam" Doyle was an African-American artist from Saint Helena Island, South Carolina. His colorful paintings on sheet metal and wood recorded the history and people of St. Helena’s Gullah community.
Doyle's paintings and sculptures are held in the permanent collections of American Folk Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Penn Center (Penn School on St. Helena Island).
William Traylor was an African-American self-taught artist from Lowndes County, Alabama. Born into slavery, Traylor spent the majority of his life after emancipation as a sharecropper. It was only after 1939, following his move to Montgomery, Alabama, that Traylor began to draw. At the age of 85, he took up a pencil and a scrap of cardboard to document his recollections and observations. From 1939 to 1942, while working on the sidewalks of Montgomery, he produced nearly 1 500 pieces of art.
While Traylor received his first public exhibition in 1940, it was not until 30 years after his death that his work finally began to receive broader attention, in the late 1970s. Recent acceptance of Traylor as a significant figure of American folk and modern art has been founded on the efforts of Charles Shannon, as well as the evolving tastes of the art world. Shannon, who first encountered Traylor's work in 1940, brought Traylor to the attention of the larger art world. Traylor now holds a central position in the fields of "self-taught" and modern art.
Nellie Mae Rowe was an African-American artist from Fayette County, Georgia. Although she is best known today for her colorful works on paper, Rowe worked across mediums, creating drawings, collages, altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations and sculptural environments. She was said to have an "instinctive understanding of the relation between color and form." Her work focuses on race, gender, domesticity, African-American folklore, and spiritual traditions.
Nellie Mae Rowe was an African-American artist from Fayette County, Georgia. Although she is best known today for her colorful works on paper, Rowe worked across mediums, creating drawings, collages, altered photographs, hand-sewn dolls, home installations and sculptural environments. She was said to have an "instinctive understanding of the relation between color and form." Her work focuses on race, gender, domesticity, African-American folklore, and spiritual traditions.
David Butler was an African American sculptor and painter from Good Hope, Louisiana. His style is epitomized by kinetic sculptures made from recycled tin or wood, which he embellished with saturated colors and geometric patterns. His work is now in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
James Castle was an American artist born in Garden Valley, Idaho. Although Castle did not know about the art world outside of his small community, his work ran parallel to the development of 20th-century art history. His works have been collected by major institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Castle's work which toured nationally in 2008-09. Castle's work entered the international arena with a major exhibition in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2011 and was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace. In 2014 The Smithsonian American Art Museum featured their recent acquisition in the exhibition Untitled: The Art of James Castle and the Whitney Museum of American Art included their acquired collection of Castle's work in the 2017 exhibition Where We Are.
James Castle was an American artist born in Garden Valley, Idaho. Although Castle did not know about the art world outside of his small community, his work ran parallel to the development of 20th-century art history. His works have been collected by major institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Castle's work which toured nationally in 2008-09. Castle's work entered the international arena with a major exhibition in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2011 and was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace. In 2014 The Smithsonian American Art Museum featured their recent acquisition in the exhibition Untitled: The Art of James Castle and the Whitney Museum of American Art included their acquired collection of Castle's work in the 2017 exhibition Where We Are.
James Castle was an American artist born in Garden Valley, Idaho. Although Castle did not know about the art world outside of his small community, his work ran parallel to the development of 20th-century art history. His works have been collected by major institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Castle's work which toured nationally in 2008-09. Castle's work entered the international arena with a major exhibition in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2011 and was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace. In 2014 The Smithsonian American Art Museum featured their recent acquisition in the exhibition Untitled: The Art of James Castle and the Whitney Museum of American Art included their acquired collection of Castle's work in the 2017 exhibition Where We Are.
Thornton Dial was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.
James Castle was an American artist born in Garden Valley, Idaho. Although Castle did not know about the art world outside of his small community, his work ran parallel to the development of 20th-century art history. His works have been collected by major institutions. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Castle's work which toured nationally in 2008-09. Castle's work entered the international arena with a major exhibition in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2011 and was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace. In 2014 The Smithsonian American Art Museum featured their recent acquisition in the exhibition Untitled: The Art of James Castle and the Whitney Museum of American Art included their acquired collection of Castle's work in the 2017 exhibition Where We Are.
Elijah Pierce was a 20th-century wood carver. Pierce was the youngest in his family born from a former slave on a farm in Baldwyn. He began carving at a young age using a pocket knife. He first started carving animals because of his prior life of growing up on a farm. Pierce was honored with the National Heritage Fellowship for his art and influence in the woodcarving community in 1982.
