(1902—1980)
Alma Rumball grew up in a pioneering family in Muskoka, Ontario. She became a clairvoyant recluse at the age of fifty after seeing a vision of Jesus. Under the direction of a spirit guide, she became a prolific creator of coloured pen-and-ink spiritual drawings.

Rumball’s work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Mexico, England, China, France, Austria, Italy, and Australia. A documentary film, The Alma Drawings (2005), won an award at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

(1976 — )
Nancy Ogilvie started painting when she was a child and later attended art school at Sheridan College, Ontario, for a few months. She dropped out to manage her mental health and worked as a sound engineer for many years. Painting is a way to confront her demons and explore other dimensions. “The death of the imagination,” she says, is the greatest tragedy. Ogilvie spends time in Ontario and Québec.

Collections: Musée d’Art Singulier Contemporain, Mansonville, Québec.

(1948 — )
David Ogilvie lives in New Brunswick. He worked in an assortment of jobs before he retired, including dishwasher, cook, farmhand, millworker, infantryman, warehouseman, press worker, and janitor. His obsession with drawing began in his 50s, during recovery from a lengthy illness. He taught himself to draw, mainly with ink, and has surrendered to the imperative to create art all day.

(1956 — )
Laurie Marshall had always doodled a bit with pencil and paper, but first picked up a paintbrush at an art drop-in center when he was about 50 years old. Marshall grew up in farming country, hence the appearance of cows, horses, and other creatures in his paintings. He applies paint in thick layers and often scratches images through the paint. He uses a palette knife or his hands to work – he doesn’t like paint brushes. Sometimes he has an idea of an image he would like to paint, but usually he just starts painting and good things happen.

Marshall paints on thin pieces of particle board. He signs them “elbo”, which is a nickname he uses for artwork. His life changed dramatically one day when an art collector saw his work; that meeting led to a successful exhibition.

(1900 – 1987)
Jahan Maka was born on a farm in Svėdasai, Lithuania. His family lost their farm during World War I, and Maka left for Canada in 1927, hoping to make enough money to return and buy another farm. He eventually settled in Flin Flon, Manitoba. He began painting at the age of sixty-eight, improvising with household materials and wooden stamps for recurring motifs. It is likely that others helped him create his later paintings.

Collections: Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba; Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan; Anthony Petullo Art Collection.

(1949 – 2014)
McKay started out as a mime artist and never lost his flair for the theatrical. He took a fundamental art course in his youth but found it too academic and boring. Instead, he taught himself to draw by studying the old masters.

The brilliance of McKay’s work can be seen in the Tower of Babel project. Although McKay developed macular degeneration, which left him legally blind, he hand-drew these works – with a large magnifying glass – until his death in 2014. McKay described his fantastical, imaginary drawing project “Axonometropolis”: a city of the imagination; infinite in structures, roads, canals and bridges as if in a daydream.

McKay worked on the Babel Project for twenty years. Axonometropolis is a term he invented to describe a city which can only exist as an axonometric drawing, which describes mass, volume and spatial relationship without perspective. Therefore, there are no vanishing points or horizon. The buildings, pathways, lakes and gardens are visible in their actual scale, in all directions, to infinity. Because he was nearly blind, he could only create one small area at a time, using a magnifier. The drawings started in 2008 were improvised directly, in ink, freehand without a plan.

McKay’s drawings were included in a book, Visionary Architecture: Unbuilt Works of the Imagination, which featured the famous 18th Century architect, Giovanni Piranese. In 1992, he received the award of excellence in international competition from the American Society of Architectural Perspectivists. He was also a member of the Blind Artists Society. His work was exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair in NYC in 2008.

(1959 — )
Teaching herself to create figuratively in clay and mixed media, Jordan MacLachlan understands the world through multiple psychological and fantastical narratives. The output of her labor-intensive forty-five years of making art has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Collections: Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario; Art Gallery of Burlington, Ontario; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; Confederation Centre for the Arts, Prince Edward Island; Stiftelsen Sør-Troms Museum, Norway; Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, USA.

Not much is known about the three Lessard brothers. The elderly, single brothers live in a small town in Eastern Quebec and can only be contacted through an antique store, which keeps their carvings hidden in a back room. The carvings are exotic, erotic, and sometimes humorous.

The brothers’ sculptures are typically made from a single piece of wood and range in size from several inches to life-size.

(1981 — )
Born in Maria, Québec, Anick Langelier lives and works in Montreal, Québec. She is a self-taught artist who has been painting compulsively since adolescence. Her personal interpretation of the Bible and love of God drive her quest for truth and inspire her art. Langelier appropriates images from artists who inspire her and integrates them into her paintings.

Collections: Musée d’Art Singulier Contemporain, Mansonville, Québec.

(1976 — )
Karine Labrie is a young, deaf, self-taught artist living in Quebec. Labrie is fascinated with historical fashion and the monarchy; her highly-detailed ink drawings depict complex interactions between members of high society. She also creates assemblages and masks from beads and items found in thrift shops.