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
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″
In Binna Kim’s artwork, she aims to present a stimulating mixture of nature and a view from her vivid imagination.
Whether in colorful abstract works or visual interpretation of nature, the works demonstrate keen attention to the smallest detail in order to emphasize the depth of expression and emotive beauty of nature. This combination helps bring the audience to a different world, a stage for viewing scenery in an emotionally evocative way. While viewing the works, the artist’s visual expression and interpretation by the audience merge and go hand in hand to evoke a memory, a passion, or a feeling unique to each of us.
Emotions-19 Series focuses on positive emotions that we might have forgotten for a while due to Covid-19 pandemic, such as love, joy, comfort and gratitude.
Binna Kim is a self-taught artist with a few different yet special career backgrounds. She is based in New York as an artist, floral designer and window display designer. Binna’s childhood was spent on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, against the backdrop of mountains and ocean that first inspired her art. Natural forms have remained a central theme in her work, and as her art career flourished she developed an interest in floral design and plant-based installations. Binna’s arrangements have graced vitrines at flagship locations of Beretta, Madison Avenue Gallery and Oxxford Clothes, and at renowned boutiques across New York City.
Apex No.1 – Emotions-19 Series | Acrylic inks, Pastels & Pens on paper | 16 x 16 inches
Apex No.2 – Emotions-19 Series | Acrylic inks, Pastels & Pens on paper | 16 x 16 inches
Metaphysical Joy No.1 – Emotions-19 Series | Acrylic inks & Pastels on paper | 24 x 18 inches
Tranquil Joy – Emotions-19 Series | Acrylic inks & Pastels on paper | 24 x 18 inches
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″
The theme of my works is coming from “To Live”. Most of them, if anything, are based on “sorrow” and “trouble” around us. Among these sorrow things, I shift my thought to feel a thanks. When I feel a thank, I see a small “dream” near in the future. It is “drawing” for me to make a form from a small dream.
Coming from a severely dysfunctional family which led to group homes and institutionalization in her teenage years, Susan Spangenberg cut her outsider artist teeth at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s renown ‘Living Museum’ art rehabilitation program. She was on the vanguard of the ‘Girl Interrupted’ female asylum artist wave that has in twenty years become the new normal, yet Susan has maintained the raw essence of that genre imbued with a twenty-first century sensibility.
Girl In Restraints Looking Through The Seclusion Room Window Girl In Restraints Looking Throughpsychiatric hospital gown, leather, pencil, marker, metal on canvas 2019 (hand sewn) 8″ x 10″
Octochrist pencil, text, marker, psychiatric hospital gown, fabric, buttons (hand sewn) on canvas 12″ x 16″
Girl In Restraints Visits The Octopi Girl In Restraiacrylic, marker, psychiatric hospital gown, fabric, buttons on unstretched canvas 2021 (hand sewn) 72″ x 20″
Girl In A Straitjacket pencil, marker, fabric on canvas (hand sewn) 8″ x 10″
Thank you to every artist who submitted artwork for this giant issue of Outsider Art Magazine. Get your art ready because in January 2021 we will be releasing a new call for art. In addition to visual art we will be accepting poetry, short (very short) stories, and interesting articles about artists and their creative journey.
Artists in this Issue
WILD TYPE
Robert Gorchov
Todd Brugman
John McCabe
Robbie Gallows
Dalia Goldberg
Stefan Pruteanu
Magdalena Sikora
Samantha Sadik
Sophie Jacobs
Paulina Klimek-Cornett
Abbott Philson
Nickolai Dostanko
Matthew Clarke
Szilard Juhasz
MRSN
Pracheta Banerjee
Baili Wise
Jimmy Gockel
Nicholas Teetelli
Karen Glykys
Robert Frankel
Charles McDowell
Arne Søvik Larsen
Nicole Sullivan
Hannah Bouchard
Xavier Yarto
Mark Pol Joyce Thornbug
Ian Hartley
Margarita Henriksson
Harrison Ernst
Homer Johnson
Tiantian Ma
Kayle A. Martinez
Rocio Garcia Montiel
Brooke Mathews
Brian Simons
Oliver Quinto
Romero Pasin
Thomas Sciacca
Dawn Rettew
Erik Aleksiewicz
NPrima/Natalia Proskuriakova
Jesus Diaz
Noah Velez
Andrew Stackpole
Gwen Hallford
Barbara Redondo
Anastasiia Kruglova
Jack Oliver
Ken Berman
Monica Tiulescu
Kitty Taylor
Dio D’Brutto
Lisa Castel
Outsider Art Magazine 