Q. What is an outsider artist? 

A. The term “outsider” has been given to artists who make works that are outside the mainstream art world and who usually lack formal training. They are often socially marginalized in some way and many have created work in institutional settings like psychiatric hospitals and prisons. They often create elaborate fantasy worlds as a means of personal expression.

This is the work of Henry Darger, an untrained “outsider” artist who worked as a janitor for most of his life and was said to have had only fragile connections to the outside world. His many elaborate and haunting drawings were discovered after his death. Darger traced images from a variety of sources, including magazines and newspapers, and combined these traced images to create new and distinct drawings with new narratives. Through this simple technique he was able to create a stunningly original, elaborate and sometimes disturbing story involving an imagined group of girls he called the Vivian Girls.

Outsider artists are often classified as folk artists, but this classification may actually work against full recognition for their contribution to the world of fine art. What is important is that anyone, regardless of formal training, can, based simply on their own initiative and desire to communicate ideas and experience, create important and profound works of art.