(1971 – 2012)
Karl Goertzen was born and lived in Ottawa, Ontario. He was a fingerprint specialist as a civilian member of the RCMP. Goertzen started drawing comics as a teenager and progressed to painting in later years when he was unable to work because of his deteriorating mental health. He died of cancer at the age of forty-one.

(1954 — )
John Devlin was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He studied architecture at the Nova Scotia Technical College in the 1970s, moving on to Cambridge University, England, to study theology in 1979. He began creating art in 1984 while living at home with his parents. In 1989 he moved into a group home where he lives still.

Collections: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; Centre Pompidou, Paris; abcd/Art Brut Collection Bruno Decharme, Paris; Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne; Treger Saint Silvestre Collection, Portugal; Antoine de Galbert Collection, Paris.

(1966 — )
J. P. Danys lives in Ottawa, Ontario, where he repairs bicycles and creates art. A self-taught artist without a resume, little is known about his life. He painted punk rockers and street scenes of city life and made life-size human sculptures that filled his apartment. Unable to adhere to social conventions, Danys found acceptance at La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa.

Édition Français de Linda Rainaldi (Auteur), Nicolas Véron (Traducteur)
5 février 2024, 5 Continents
192 pages, 22 x 2.3 x 28 cm
ISBN-13 979-1254600375
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Ce volume, dédié aux expressions de l’art outsider réalisées au Canada, a pour premier objectif d’atteindre et de sensibiliser sur ce thème un public de lecteurs le plus large possible. L’ouvrage donne la parole à des artistes qui, jusqu’à une période récente, étaient exclus du monde de l’art traditionnel, leur travail ne se conformant pas aux idéologies des institutions artistiques établies. L’art outsider est le reflet d’un territoire de production culturelle qui donne un sens et une visibilité aux pratiques de création indépendantes de la formation formelle, des mouvements artistiques reconnus et des tendances actuelles. L’art outsider n’existe, dit-on, que raison de l’élitisme culturel et des différences de classe où les marges sont définies par le centre. La marginalisation sociale de ses représentants, souvent due à des problèmes de santé mentale, un conduit à leur exclusion du monde de l’art contemporain. Ce livre, qui invite les spectateurs à renoncer aux mythes et aux stéréotypes sur l’origine de la créativité et à soutenir le travail de créateurs autodidactes s’exprimant de manière unique, affronte les thèmes de la justice sociale, de la diversité et de la diversité de l’intégration dans le monde de l’art.

Linda Rainaldi (Author)
Published January 2024, Five Continents Editions
192 pages, 22 x 2.3 x 28 cm
ISBN-13 979-1254600375
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“Outsider art” is the name given to the idiosyncratic work of self-taught creators who are driven to use their own invented visual language to bring forth images from their imaginations. It is outside the continuum of art history, outside the boundaries of art recognized by established art institutions, and outside the collective discourse of the mainstream art world. This book examines the underlying biases, ideologies, and social factors that inform the various approaches to outsider art, including myths surrounding mental illness, movements toward social inclusion, and movements away from the marginalizing effect of labels. Most importantly, Outsider Art of Canada explores how we think about art and who is entitled to call themselves an artist. In this survey dedicated to outsider art in Canada, the first of its kind, the artists introduced have much to tell us about their need to create, unapologetically and without regard to public opinion.

(1920 – 2005)
Papa Palmerino (Sorgente Palmerino) was born in Umbria, Italy, and immigrated to Canada in 1954 with his wife and children. He worked as a janitor, cook, and factory worker in Montreal. After retiring in 1970, he established a workshop and store on the ground floor of his home to sell religious artifacts.

As the self-proclaimed “Pope Palmerino, servant of Jesus,” he created staged photographs, rosaries, and papal headgear. Palmerino sought to encourage piety in those around him and to share a message of peace and love though his various creations. In 2000, a fire destroyed thirty years of work.

Collections: Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne.

(1891 – 1972)
Scottie Wilson is an internationally-known Canadian outsider artist. He was born in London, moved to Glasgow, and left school at age 8 to sell newspapers and patent medicines on the street. He served in WWI. Little is known about Wilson until he turned up in Toronto, Ontario, in the 1930s. He eked out a living by selling odds and ends in a junk shop and began drawing with his special pen.

Scottie’s artwork is featured in many books and journals and held in many international collections, including the Collection de L’Art Brut, Lausanne; Tate Modern, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

(1939 – 2017)
Born in Québec City in a family of five siblings, Roland Wilkie survived an abusive childhood; most of his youth was spent in foster care in Montreal. In his late teens, he returned to Québec City to live with his mother and stepfather. Wilkie voluntarily admitted himself for psychiatric treatment in 1995. Although he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he declined drug treatment.

(1913  – 2007)
The von Engelhardt family was displaced from Estonia after World War II and sought refuge in Germany. Serge von Engelhardt immigrated to Grand Prairie, Alberta, with his family in 1952 and eked out a living as a farmhand. They moved to Edmonton, Alberta, where he worked at odd jobs and constructed a ceramics studio in his basement. They moved to BC in 1980, where he opened another studio to sell his ceramic work. While he sold some decorative items, von Engelhardt’s magnificent sculptures were never fully appreciated by the public.

1959 – 2021
Known professionally as Henriette Valium, Patrick Henley was a comic book artist and “painter of unsurpassed strangeness” based in Montreal, Québec. He started drawing as a child and gained recognition in the underground comic scene in Europe and North America at the start of his career in the 1980s. His outrageous and hallucinogenic style kept him from the mainstream comic book industry.

Henley won the Pigskin Peters Award at the 2017 Doug Wright Awards for his graphic novel Palace of Champions (Conundrum, 2016). His art has been published in numerous anthologies as well as his own books: 1000 It’s an Album Valium! (self-published, 1987); Primitive Cretin (self-published, 1994); Elle Est De Retour! (1989); Maladies (1991); The Clinical Visit (1995); La Prison Anale des Freres Rouges (1996); Curées Malades (2000); and Mother’s Heart (2000).