Artist's Statement Contemporary Outsider Art

...art from the inner self, art from the imagination

My work comes from my imagination, images form in the mind, and are transfered directly to paper, or the medium I am working with at any given time. I am greatful for the ability to work this way, and tend to think there is more to the work than my personal skill. I tend to produce work that recreates certain dynamics based on how I feel towards, my family, people, the community, the world. So my artwork often makes social and cultural comments on family, abuse, sexuality, gender, race and mental health, other works just simply appear as figures and objects - images that seem to bear no relation to me in ways that I can define. My work is inconsistent, in that I do not paint or draw with the strong and distinctive style of Art Masters. I accept that, I am just what I am.

My work is directly related to how I feel. When I put my thoughts and feelings on display through artwork, it seems to make better sense to me. Visual representations, that occur in my dreams, visions, and out of body experiences of mental illness, re emerge in a visual form that seems to explain challenging issues affecting me in my life at that time. They are a personal and public (through exhibition) record of ill health and recovery, that I am unaware of at the time.

I feel a distinct connection to the Outsider Art Movement, and it's orgins in 18th Centrury Laussane, France where Jean Debuffet formally brought Outsider Art to the worlds attention.
I feel it is clear that, the circumstances have changed over the years, but the connection and the conditions in which the Outsider Artist of that time haven't. For me the evidence is there to see, because today this type of art remains the same - hidden, diverse, and difficult to catergorise in terms of originality and style.

I identify as a Contemporary Outsider Artist even though every day world has changed, in ways that reduce the isolating circuimstances and experiences of the Outsider Artist. Technology, health care and community services have all had an impact on the negative apsects of the outsider artist's working enviornment. Otherwise the isolation today can be a self imposed choice. Having said that, these changes don't seem to prevent the nature or intensity of isolation experienced by the outsider artist, particularly in terms of those existential and invisible conditons that persist physically and within the mind. It continues to be manifest in their work.

Essentially formed to support people as artitst's, and their artistic contributions that remain outside the mainstream art world, The Other Side Gallery is now a well known Outsider Arts organisation, created by people with a mental health diagnosis, or condition's that in similar ways exclude them socially.

Working at the gallery has presented opportunities to explore my artistic abilities with others, a process that is often expressed uniquely, and worth sharing with an audience, or a community.

When it comes to trying to defining myself as an Artist, in an artist's profle. I advise you to simply look at the work and make up your own mind....