The annual Outsider Art Fair features “self-taught, outsider, or art brut artists.” Part of its delight is a chance to see works by deceased artists now in the history books—like Ralph Fasanella, William Hawkins, Martin Ramirez, Winfred Rembert, Adolf Wolfli and Purvis Young—and to meet living artists— like Pamela Smith of Vermont and Nancy Josephson of New York City, who’s bead-bedazzled Honda art car was parked outside the entrance to the fair. About 70 exhibitors filled the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York from Feb. 27 to March 2, 2025.
New York artist and musician Nancy Josephson (b. 1955) holds her beaded cremation urn at Lindsay Gallery’s booth. Her “Joy Ride” art car Honda parked out front of the fair—one of at least nine that she’s embellished over the years—is covered in her signature rhinestones, sequins, beads, animal taxidermy forms, and found objects.
Aarne Anton at his Nexus Singularity of Pamona, New York, with Lonnie Holey’s sandstone head, Kevin House sculptures, and various sculptures by unknown artists.
Morton Bartlett (1909-1992), the “adopted only son of a Boston Brahmin couple,” sculpted curious hand-crafted plaster children, which he then photographed in narrative tableaux that often have the feel of children’s-clothing-store display windows gone wrong — specifically the eerie sexual charge shot through the scenes. He and his dolls appeared in Yankee magazine in 1962, but remained little-known until they were rediscovered after his death in 1992. At its most affecting, Bartlett’s art is a disconcerting combo of innocence, flirtation, and latent pedophilia. And the dolls’ expressiveness—irritation, anger, crying—creeps under your skin. At Marion Harris, New York.
The son of a missionary and a carpenter, David Butler (American, 1898–19970 filled his house and small yard with painted metal pieces like these at Fleisher Ollman Gallery of Philadelphia from the 1970s—a rooster, a boat with propeller, a figure with weapons, a mother and child.
Charles Dellschau’s April 1919 watercolor and pencil drawing “4348 Aero Nix” at Galerie Pol Lemetais of Toulouse, France. Born in in Prussia on June 4, 1830, after immigrating to the United States, “he worked as a butcher and then retired to a small attic apartment in Houston, Texas,” according to Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum. “His earliest known artwork is contained in an illustrated diary dated 1899. He continued to work until 1922, filling at least 13 notebooks with drawings, watercolors, and collages depicting imaginative airships and an account of his mid–19th century involvement as a draftsman for the super secret (and potentially imaginary) Sonora Aero Club that possessed an antigravity fuel called, “NB Gas.” Dellschau’s tale was focused on the Club’s passionate desire to create humankind’s first navigable aircraft.” His art discovered and salvaged from a landfill after his death at age 92 in April 1923.
“I work with a visual language of lines, dashes, dots to create works that read as mysterious coded systems,” Shane Drinkwater of Queensland in his native Australia has written on his website. “Some works read almost as topographical or astronomical maps, while others read as keys of symbols, arranged and categorized.” This acrylic and collage on vintage sewing pattern paper was exhibited at Pulp of Holyoke, Massachusetts.
“Without struggle, there is no reason to live. If you’re not struggling, you don’t deserve to be alive,” said Ralph Fasanella (1914–1997). The Ruffed Grouse Gallery of Narrowsburg, New York, offered a wall of his oil paintings from the 1940s to ‘90s. He was born in the Bronx and raised in New York City’s Little Italy, before fighting in an all-volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade against Franco’s army in the Spanish Civil War, and going on to be a union organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. He took up art at age 31, but was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, finding employment at a family-owned gas station in the Bronx. A 1972 magazine article brought him attention that allowed him to focus on making paintings.
“We think of them as having human emotions and I try to capture that. It’s how we connect with the animals in our lives,” Alison Friend (b. 1973) of Britain’s Lake District says of her anthropomorphic animal portraits, which were exhibited at Harman Projects, New York. She has illustrated more than 20 children’s books.
Catherine Garrigue, born in Paris in 1954, taught taught sculpture for 15 years before focusing on her own art-making. Jennifer Lauren Gallery of Manchester, United Kingdom, exhibited her 2004 fountain pen drawing “The House of Eternal Returns 3-3, Demeures les eternels retours.”
I Made Griyawan’s acrylic paintings revive traditional techniques of his native Batuan Bali, where he was born in 1979 (?) to artist parents. Diamond of New York exhibited his 2008 acrylic on canvas painting “Animals Forum.”
William Hawkins (1895-1990) learned to draw by copying illustrations from calendars and horse-auction announcements while growing up on a farm in Kentucky. After relocating to Columbus, Ohio, at age 21, he painted fantastic animals and cityscapes—like this 1979 enamel painting on construction paper of the “Billy James Theater,” exhibited by Ricco/Maresca Gallery of New York.
Mirian Inêz da Silva (1938 – 1996) oil paintings on wood in the group exhibition “Follow My Moves,” featuring art from Brazil in the fair’s Curated Space, in this case curated by São Paulo-based Mateus Nunes.
Simone Johnson’s 2024 colored pencil drawing “NYC Bodega Cats – Valentine’s Day Products” was exhibited by Pure Vision Arts of New York, which provides “people with autism and developmental disabilities opportunities for artistic expression and to build public awareness of their important creative contributions.”
Sarah Lee (b. 1980), an Irish nurse based in London, England, exhibited acrylic on wood paintings, including at center “Barbarism begins at home,” at The FolkArtwork Collective of Des Moines, Iowa. (She also had paintings at Pulp of Holyoke, Massachusetts.)
“Granda kiel malgranda mia mondo,” 2021 mixed media drawing, from the series “Tra Miaj Manoj,” by Margot (b. 1982). She “started drawing compulsively” in 2014, says Henry Boxer Gallery of Richmond, United Kingdom. “I believe that the doors [of perception] are our bodies and that we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to the boundaries of our bodies. We are much more.”
Joe Massey (American 1895-?) pen and ink drawings made in Columbus, Ohio, penitentiary in 1946 and ’47. At Keith de Lellis Gallery. Each one includes a brief poem (clockwise from top left): “Gone and jump You little Imp And be a swimp.” “Were you speaking to me. I come to see.” “They play on his snout he can’t get out.” “She had a pull on a bull.”
“Grouches Lurk #1,” acrylic on synthetic fur, polymer clay, foam, bonds, steel, glue, 6-pound weights and mannequins, by Michael McGrath (b.1977) of Rhinebeck, New York. It was featured by Court Tree Collective of Brooklyn, in front of Jacob Gerard’s “Russian Prison Cat” acrylic and oil pastel paintings (left) and Yool Kim (b. 1982) of Seoul, South Korea, acrylic paintings.
French artist Mina Mond‘s 2025 artwork “this little light of mine” featured at Galerie Pol Lemetais of Toulouse, France. “A spiritualist artist,” according to her website. “Heiress of the Völvas, seeresses of the pre-Christian Germanic religions, trance through ritual drum and lucid dreams provide her the necessary material for her creations. Epic frescoes, meticulously filled, his archetypal images become a spiritual journey for those who take the time to see. To see beyond the compulsive and cathartic profusion of the artist is to meditate on the secrets blown by the ancient minds of which she is the messenger.”
Takashi Nemoto (b. 1958) is a Japanese cartoonist and illustrator known for his intentionally vulgar compositions—like (clockwise from top left): “Rude Style 1,” “Birth,” “Blooming Family Heaven II,” “Future Sperm Brazil,” “Silence Is Golden,” and “The Brain of the Back.” At Akio Nagasawa Gallery of Tokyo, Japan.
The plants and animals of his native El Salvador inspire the art of Jose Nunez (b. 1945)—like “Hombres, horses, hores, pajaros,” 2011, marker, paint and glitteron plywood, at Dutton. “His work often depicts memories from time spent alone in the countryside taking care of his family’s cows. Out of those memories also come artistic investigations of mythological subjects like cadejo, a shadow dog that hunts at night and used to terrify him,” according to San Francisco’s Creativity Explored, which works with artists with developmental disabilities, and where Nunez has made art since 1996.
The paintings of Mike Ousley (b. 1976), like this one at Stellarhighway, are populated by scuzzy witches, farmers, whalers, devils and ne’er-do-wells scampering around forests, bayous, pastures and strip malls. Having earned an MFA from the University of Cincinnati, his pictures—with titles like “When I Lost My Ass in a Card Game & Had to Walk Home Through the Cut in the Hill”—are rooted in Appalachian folk stories of his native Kentucky. “Sometimes when family would come in, as many as 15 might gather in a room and tell stories and drink coffee,” he writes on his website. His art is funny and a bit trippy with maybe some melancholy in there too. (Also at James Barron Art of Kent, Connecticut.)
“The wor[l]d is looking to Amerrican for the answer,” the Alabama artist, marine and evangelical minister Benjamin Franklin Perkins (1904-1993) wrote on his 1988 oil on canvas painting “The Future of America,” at Pan American Art.
Drawings by Indianapolis artist Chris Pyle (b. 1956) at Hughes & Olsen of Sydney, Australia. He generally works in pencil, ink and gouache on the backs of record album sleeves.
Martin Ramirez (1895–1963) immigrated to the United States from his native Mexico in 1925, at age 30, leaving behind his wife Ana and their four children, to work on railroads and in California mines. He was diagnosed as bipolar after a 1931 arrest and was treated at a series of psychiatric institutions. He made nearly 300 drawings—like this pencil, tempera and crayon drawing from about 1953 that was on view at Fleisher Ollman—while being treated for schizophrenia at DeWitt State Hospital in northern California during the last 15 years of his life.
The art of Winfred Rembert (1945-2021) reflects his childhood in Georgia and his imprisonment and seven years working on a chain gang after he was arrested during a 1960s civil rights march. While imprisoned, he learned to work leather, which became his primary artistic medium upon his release—as in his dyed, carved and tooled leather pieces “No Way Out,” 2011 (top), and “Watermelon,” 1998, at James Barron Art of Kent, Connecticut. He spent much of his later life residing in New Haven, Connecticut.
Pamela Smith of Bristol, Vermont, with her papier-mâché sculpture and acrylic on masonite paintings—with titles like “Joy Abounds,” “Three Wise Women,” “It’s Happening,” “Women of Wonder,” “Seven Fairy Godmothers”— at Northern Daughters gallery (which shuttered its brick-and-mortar outpost in Vergennes, Vermont, in 2023), which is run by Justine Jackson and Smith’s daughter Sophie Pickens.
Moustapha Souley’s African hair shop sign from 1950s or ’60s at The Ruffed Grouse Gallery of Narrowsburg, New York.
“Diriku – Myself,” 2019, crayon, acrylic, pen, spiral and collage on paper, by Indonesian artist Imam Sucahyo (b.1978) at Calvin-Morris Gallery of New York.
Joseph Pepe Vignes (1920-2007) played accordion for dances and worked in a factory. When the French artist turned 40, he took up drawing—like these marker on paper artworks from the 1970s to 1990s of birds, fish, boat, car, bus. At Galerie Kahn, Ars-en-Re, France. (Note: The car drawing at bottom is by an anonymous artist.)
Swiss artist Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930) woked primarily in farming before he made a series of attempts to assault girls ranging in age from 14 to 3. He spent a couple years in prison, before being admitted to a mental asylum in 1895, where he took up art after a few years (like this pencil drawing from 1917 exhibited by Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York) and resided as a patient until his death.
The “Woodbridge Figures” are 4- to 7-inch tall wooden figures “discovered in a shed near the old clay pits of Woodbridge,” New Jersey, during excavations for a mall in late 1960s, reports Powers / Lowenfels Gallery of New York. Believed to have been carved between 1900 and 1920, “many of the larger adult figures have small, removable dowels atop their heads, the males with phallic pegs and the females with miniature naked torsos.” “The four figures exhibited at the fair were found separately from this primary cache in Irvington,” New Jersey.
Around 1970, Purvis Young (1943-2010) began covering buildings across three blocks of Miami with his paintings of Jesus, cities, mountains, Haiti, slaves, soldiers, horses, angels. When those buildings were torn down, he began again on another street. “I listen to talk shows on the radio and I listen to Black people talk and I paint what they say,” Young told the Miami Herald in June 1974. “The way I put some of them crying is because Black people cry first and then the violence comes. I put some of them straight because they are reaching. They are trying to tell the establishment something. … They are going to get tired and when they do I’m going to paint them angry.” At the fair, Pan American Projects in Miami presented a wall of his paintings in mixed media on wood some dating to the 1970s.
Allen Yu (b. 1998), an autistic artist from Pennsylvania, joined the studio at Pennsylvania’s Center for Creative Works, which serves adults with developmental disabilities, in 2020. He mainly creates in marker and pencil, like his 2024 drawing “McDonalds Food from Around the World.”
Born in Italy in 1966, where he studied law and the arts, Domenico Zindato has lived and worked in Mexico since 1997. Andrew Edlin Gallery of New York featured his drawings and paintings, including (clockwise from left): “Volo di una Freccia-Pensiero (Flight of an Arrow-Thought,” 2020; “An Infinitely Supple Tree Calling,” 2022; “Three Snakes Forms/Conjure a Painting/On Numinous Abstract Grounds,” 2024; and untitled, 2011. (Zindato’s art was also featured by God’s Love We Deliver.)
At Kishka Gallery and Library of White River Junction, Vermont.
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