The Spring Map paintings are inspired by the quarantine of Covid-19. Using old Renaissance maps to speak to the spread of disease felt fitting as a starting point for finding our place in a new unknown world. The geography of these old maps is strange and wonky which resonates with the current world situation. Martin Waldseemüller’s Mappa Mundi of 1507 inspired me. His map was the first map to name America (after Vespucci’s voyage). It is comprised of twelve pieces, which seems a perfect metaphor for how the globe has been shattered, nations shutting borders and residents under lockdowns, all separated.
The thought of the Great Plague of 1351 seemed so ancient and never even a possibility of happening to us given our great medical and social strides in the last six hundred or so years. Yet, unbelievably here we are, literally living through a historic pandemic surrounded by huge uncertainty and losses of life and of connection. My paintings are paintings of life, of finding existential meaning in crisis. The geography is deliberately inaccurate as a means to portray disorientation and confusion. The colors are a nod to spring and regeneration, including flowers in states of decay and of blossom. These paintings are my thoughts and dreams of our place in the stars and our time.
Susan Lizotte lives in Los Angeles and balances her studio practice with her family and pets, including a pet peacock.
Mare Incognitum | oil on canvas | 12 x 12
Mappa Mundi Spring Map | oil on canvas | 54 x 96Mappa Mundi Terra Incognita | oil on canvas | 30 x 30 x 2Mappa Mundi Terra Incognita II | oil on wood panel | 16 x 16 x 2
My work is loosely based on the figure, sometimes morphing into quirky and other worldly beings. The figures I create, some creepy and dark are not to be found on the street but rather in one’s imagination or dreams creating an alternate universe. My ceramic figures inhabit boats, circular and square stands, clay or wooden wagons with wheels, figures sitting on animals or chairs and recently figures appear in portraits.
My work is loosely based on the figure, sometimes morphing into quirky and other worldly beings. The figures I create, some creepy and dark are not to be found on the street but rather in one’s imagination or dreams creating an alternate universe. My ceramic figures inhabit boats, circular and square stands, clay or wooden wagons with wheels, figures sitting on animals or chairs and recently figures appear in portraits.
Although my figures are pared-down minimalist in outside appearance, I mean for them to have complicated and subtle inner lives. For me, they carry the heavy weight of emotional fragility.
Wondering how to live in the world with others … this is my way of speaking through my art, my way of being in the world.
Girl Bandit | Ceramic/porcelain | 4.5″h x 3.5″w x .5″d
Flower Bandit | Ceramic/earthenware | 4.5″h x 3.5″w x .25″d
Horse with Rider | Ceramic/earthenware | 3.5″h x 4.5″w x .5″d
Blue Dress | Ceramic/earthenwaren |4.5″h x 3.5″w x .5″d
Releah Michelle was born in Georgia in 1987. She is a self-taught abstract expressionist who has been honing her artistic voice for many years. Merging her love for painting abstract figures and automatic painting around the movement of energy paves a straight line to her artistic vocal cord.
She is currently based in Georgia and is inspired by her ancestors, ancient Egyptian history, the spiritual world, meditation, and the use of bright colors. Beauty also plays a significant part in her style presented in the artworks because she was previously an independent latex clothing fashion designer for a total of 7 years. She presented at NY Fashion Week and put on several local fashion shows. Her creative process for the abstract figurative paintings begin with either her sketching first or free-hand painting figures into abstract backgrounds. Her creative process for abstract paintings begin with layers of acrylic paint being applied on the canvas over a period of days often incorporating a mixed media approach.
Artist Statement:
Art is a path so I describe my art as an extension of my previous fashion designer career. As an artist and expressionist who is constantly evolving spiritually my art explores the relationship between beauty and the spiritual world. Reflections of the soul, beautiful black woman, and texture are a couple of the subject matters you will find in my artwork.
Neutral Identity | Acrylic on Canvas | 24″ x 12″
We Are Connected | Acrylic on Canvas | 18″ x 24″
The Sun is Shining | Acrylic on Canvas | 18″ x 24″
Heatwave VS Comfort | Mixed Media on Canvas | 18″ x 24″
I became inspired and encouraged to start painting in 2019, following the completion of a creativity workshop based on the premise that if one has a long-held desire, dream or instinctive push to do something, it is most likely a nudge from the universe that needs to be explored.
Prior to that time, I had experienced great difficulty expressing myself through art. After taking the workshop, I felt the freedom and encouragement to start painting. I believe my art is an expression of those feelings of freedom, openness and fun! My medium is acrylics and I describe my art as expressive, intuitive, unique, bold, and colorful.
In some ways, I feel that I do not do the art, the art does me! I am usually quite amused and surprised by the finished painting! I know that my art work is an expression of my life experiences, desires and dreams. When thinking about the viewers of my art, I imagine them standing there, being intrigued, heads cocked to one side, thinking,” wow, what is this all about?”
As a self- taught artist, in my seventies, my wish is to inspire and encourage others to open up to their creative selves and express their gifts.
I, Thomas Riesner, am an outsider art artist based in Leipzig. The painting I have acquired myself. In 1990 I began to deal intensively with painting.Mostly I paint in the Durchblick eV Leipzig, here there is also a gallery and a museum. The association uses a logo based on one of my etchigs. It shows two eyes and a bird. Often I also paint at home in a small studio. My ideas come mostly spontaneously from the subconscious, just like that, often when I listen to music. In social media, for example, facebook and instagram, I am actice. That´s also how I got to outsider art magazine. There I was published in issue 4.
Martin Coyle is and Outsider Artist with no formal art education or training, he has been painting out of his home studio located in a converted barn behind his house for the last 15 years here in the beautiful city of Dover N.H
Martin Coyle is originally from Long Island New York and is related to late NYC expressionist painter Otto Mjaanes.
Coyle is married to his beautiful wife Rachel and they have a 19-year-old daughter Solei
Statement by the artist
As an outsider artist I don’t go into creating my paintings with an intention or direction, I let the artwork create itself. I consider myself an expressionist and create both figurative and nonfigurative artwork .
I have always been an artist but didn’t get serious with my art until 2012, In 2013 I had my first group exhibition art show at 100 market gallery in Portsmouth N.H and won the award for honorable mention.
Since then, I have been in group art shows in New Jersey and twice in California.
I work in many different mediums and enjoy both painting and drawing.
Marcela is a self-taught intuitive artist born in Sydney, Australia. She is currently based in Hong Kong.
Her earliest creative explorations were in dance, drama, singing and visual arts. In childhood and adolescence, she found an escape in art and a place where she could express herself without words.
After high school, she completed a Law Degree at the University of Technology Sydney, which saw her work in various jobs from legal to publishing related jobs.
She felt herself pulled back into the arts during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The turmoil brought about by the pandemic, led her to connect more deeply artistically and spiritually. Creating art felt therapeutic and her art quickly became deeply connected to her spiritual practice.
Marcela’s work is based on intuition, mindfulness and vibrational energies. Her works revolve around exploring the realms of the unknown and altered states of consciousness. Rainbows are often found in her works, as a symbol of the rainbow bridge.
Through predominately ink, watercolour and hand drawn digital art, her works represent her way of translating the unseen energies she experiences into something more tangible for others to see.
She hopes her art sparks discussions about other-worldly topics that transcend current human understanding.
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Artist Statement:
I try to capture the invisible and make it visible.
My work is based on intuition, mindfulness and vibrational energies.
My artworks are often created subconsciously from a prayerful meditative place, only once they are finished do I come to understand what they are expressing.
In part through automatic drawing and also through accessing my intuition, I challenge others to see beyond current human understanding by diagramming elements of the immaterial world and exploring altered states of consciousness. To have people look past the 5 senses, that is my goal and inspiration.
Felicity | Hand Drawn Digital Art | 16″ x 20″
By Your Side | Hand Drawn Digital Art | 16″ x 20″
A Face In The Crowd | Hand Drawn Digital Art | 16″ x 20″
Better Together | Hand Drawn Digital Art | 18″ x 24″
Issue Six is now available digitally for free or $25 for a printed version.
Artists in issue six
Robert Gorchov *Cover Artist
Robert Frankel
Kevin Kemp
Dio D’Brutto
Valentina Fedoseeva
Ernest Compta
Matthew Clarke
RINA Taytu
Nicklas Farrantello
Sven Froekjaer-Jensen
Mitchell Pluto
Richard Reynolds
Gale Rothstein
Thelma Van Rensburg
Jennifer Levine
Susan Spangenberg
Emmanuel Laveau
Samia Farah
Selkie Quan
Bux Dhyne
Bill Skrips
Poete Maudit
Christy Carter
BILL _L47
Sophie Jacobs
Oshi Artist
Michael Chomick
David Sheskin
William Francis
Richard Green
Hermine Harman
Recently, at a traveling carnival, I came across one of those old coin-operated fortune-telling machines. You put a quarter in the slot, a figure comes to life, waves its “hand” over a glass ball, and out pops a scroll of paper with your future written on it. I was struck by the device’s mannequin, wrapped in colorful, patterned, silks and the device’s antique carved wood cabinet, with brass detailing. I was also intrigued by the idea that this mechanical device with gears and cogs was somehow supposed to be able to tell me my future. How could a cold machine possibly know my life’s destiny? Of course, it can’t. Like the fortune cookie or the Magic 8 Ball, these things are meant solely for entertainment.
Yet, they still hold power over us. For some people, a Ouija board or a deck of tarot cards can be the couriers of life-changing information. These objects are believed to possess mystifying and arcane knowledge, even though, in reality, they are just novelty consumer products. The clerk at the magic store orders a gross of tarot cards whenever the stock is low and a new Ouija board can be purchased in the board game section of your local toy store, next to Chutes and Ladders.
The thing that makes these items magical can be found in their construct…not in just how they are made or their graphic design, but in their entire idea. Usually, the stories around these items are just as important as the items themselves; and the contexts in which they are used play a massive part in their power.
I began to wonder if there are other objects that somehow provide knowledge through purely mechanical means. Old analog calculators leaped to mind, the slide ruler, the abacus, and the mechanical adding machine with its crank handle. These devices also convey complicated ideas through the simple arrangement of moving parts. And their power is not questioned. All of ancient China was controlled using sliding beads on an abacus.
Like the fortune-telling machine at the fair, these tools of science were often also beautiful, delicately carved devices with inlaid brass and ivory. Although these machines were based on math, for some, they too possess mystifying and arcane knowledge. They have their own mysticism, their own sacred places of use, and their own histories and lore. In the hands of mystics at NASA, the slide ruler took us to the moon.
So here I present a new paradigm. What if science made devices that could calculate more than just numbers? What if engineers and mathematicians could come up with formulas and conversion wheels that could tell us who to love or the nature of the soul? What might it look like if all the mysteries of the world could be quantified, laid out in charts, then formatted into easy-to-use slide wheels? What if there was a company that had been creating just such devices for decades? This collection is a celebration of that idea
Whom Should You Trust | mixed | 16″ x 16″ x .75″
What They Made You Forget | mixed | 20″ x 30″ x 1″
How Many Cat Souls Equals One Dog Soul | mixed | 30″ x 20.75″ x 1″
Is Your Relative Possessed | mixed | 20″ x 23″ x 1″
Outsider Art Magazine 