Wellness Calendar: Wednesday 9 July

Outsider art
Art: the application of expression, creativity and/or imagination; the conveyance or communication of ideas, using light, colour, shape, form, space, tone, pattern and texture.
How many people are put off doing art because of a belief that they aren’t good enough, that the final product would be imperfect in some way? How liberating might it be to know that embodiment (defined as the visible form of an idea or notion or sense of something; to make an abstract concept into something concrete, such as fear or injustice or heartbreak) doesn’t have anything to do with a set of technical skills – quite the opposite?
Outsider art is art that’s made by untrained, self-taught artists. As a movement it started out when doctors took note of the artwork of their asylum inpatients, which developed into a publication called The Artistry of the Insane (1922). It then became known as Art Brut, where such work was appreciated for its rawness, its lack of compromise or corruption from the outside world, before the term ‘outside art’ was introduced in 1972. Check out such random examples as Aloïse Corbaz, Fleury-Joseph Crepin, Danielle Jacqui and Raymond Morris and see if you find their work (and their stories) inspirational.