There art reflects non-traditional ideas, intricate fantasy words and sometimes excessive mental states. It is unexpected and uncooked. Outsider artists’ quietly work outside the purview main steam art, with no official training or degrees and more significantly, they don’t make work for galleries and museums and don’t care much for moments going on in the ‘art circles’. They are untutored artists late bloomers, even loners or psychiatric patients at times, who are looking for a creative outlet.

In an attempt Indian art lover much better with this genre of art, self taught artist Shubhdarshini Singh has put tougher an outsider Art Fair in Delhi. The team was first coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 to describe art makes outside the boundaries of official culture.
Nervousness on canvas
It may see like an uncommon concept, but outside art is no new. At the turn of the 20th century, Adolf Wolfli, limited to a mental asylum in Switzerland, produced a monumental 25,000 page shown narrative. He often worked with the barest of materials, dealing smaller works with visitors to the clinic, to source pencils, paper and other requirements. Today he is known as one of the very first outsider artists.

Art gallery owner and curator Bhavna Kakkar, explains an outsider artist as someone who doesn’t bother about what’s contemporary or modern”. Initially, ‘outside artists many have just involved asylum inmates and prisoners who desired to vent their angst and kill time but over the year outsider arts has prolonged its scope to include naïve art makers, who don’t any formal training. The days of people locked up in asylums for years are over. Now psychiatric patients just visit OPDs, get there treatments and go back of there daily lives. Outsider art these days includes late bloomers art or found item art.

Late bloomers refers to people who discover there performers side late in life at times as late as in there 60s or 70s; and found object art is where the person create wonderful set ups and assemblages using bizarre and innovative mediums, scraps and to day objects.

A great example is the creator of the Rock garden in Chandigarh, Nek Chand. In his spare time, Chand, a road examiner in the public works department used to collect materials into his own vision of a mind-blowing garden choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake and turning it into the Rock garden. It has been one of the major tourist points of interest of the Chandigarh for years.

The mental health take

Singh explains further Outsider Artists don’t need exercising or sophisticated materials. If they don’t have a canvas they will colour on books. If they don’t have paint they don’t have licks they will just paint there fingers!’’ it is there laws interest and lack of knowledge of art history that separates there work from trained artists.

Take the example of Udai Kumar, a 37years old self taught artist from Chennai, who suffers from a neuromuscular degenerative condition. It means he has curved spine and cannot use his lower limbs. Yet, he has a rounded spine and cannot use his lower limbs. I use pillows for support and since it is only my right wrist that has limited movement, I hold the brush with my index finger and thump to paint. He learns to paint simply as a hobby. But what began as a silent expression on the canvas to express his sufferings soon turned into art that could be limited to his room. The dull sketches and acrylics depict impressionist scenery and portraits. Making self portraits is the most challenging task that had picked up the nuances of painting after the participating the class held by the famous artist KM Adimoolam.

Art is a discovery of the psyche. Once you let your innermost desires and instincts take over you may get to know a side of you that you did not know about. In case of mentally unstable people it is a representation of there innermost traumas. Some of the words leading artists writers and theorists have had mental health problems Vincent van Gogh the Dutch painter, john Nash the American mathematician even the eccentric and prolific Austrian composer Mozart. Dr Nagpal adds “art is a common expression and cure in cases of cerebral palsy, autism and mental retardation. People who suffer from these ailments often cannot themselves through words. They can only communicate through there works of art.”

Renowed Delhi based art critic johny ML, who had structured a project called ‘Expressions at Tihar’ for the Tihar jail inmates a couple of years ago, feels it is unfair to label any art from as outsider. His project took contemporary artists inside a jail to work along with the under trials and convicts. He says, “The idea was to break the wall between set up artists and beginners, to tap their potential. We also wanted to convey through this project that it is never to late to bring out the artist in you.”