The Outliers: Self-Taught Visions at The Gallery at The Palms

Curator Elizabeth Rodriguez has long been an advocate for Outlier Art and its artists, and several of the artists in this collection are local to Borrego.

When visiting this show, I urge viewers to spend a moment reading the artists' individual statements. Most Outlier artists, though not all, have well-developed views about their creative journey. Understanding their source of inspiration and intention provides valuable insight into their artworks.

What Is Outlier Art?

In 1945, French artist Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut to describe work made by self-taught individuals outside traditional cultural norms of academic training, culture, or professional ambition. Dubuffet believed these unpretentious artists expressed pure, authentic impulses, free from the desire for fame or commercial competition. It was an "illegitimate" art, born outside any formal artistic filter. Its makers were champions of non-alignment, standard-bearers of personal and unconditional thought, self-taught and raw.

Art Brut was renamed Outsider Art in 1972 by British critic Roger Cardinal. American counterparts later adapted Outsider Art into Outlier Art. Both terms are recognized.

Dubuffet's efforts eventually led to the founding of a specialized museum in 1976, the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Artists

Katinka Clementsmith

Katinka Clementsmith refers to her portraits as her "imaginary friends." She explains, "I have aphantasia, which means I don't see images in my imagination." She says this condition contributes to the out-of-proportion features in her portraits. "In every painting the eyes are too big, one eye significantly larger than the other, the necks too long. This disproportion helps emphasize the duality we all have within us." Katinka's portraits are powerful, edgy, and thought-provoking.

Her landscape paintings are just as curious. She likes to create landscapes with things out of place or out of time: an oddly placed structure that makes the viewer question what it is doing in the wrong location. "My favorite part of taking long drives is the deserted buildings that are leftovers of someone else's dream. I want to stop and say hello to the ghost of the dreamer."

Katinka's unique creativity provokes the imagination. I think everyone will find something in her paintings to relate to, something you may not have realized existed in you.

Rebecca Ducksworth

Rebecca Ducksworth explores the grounding presence of the natural world in her work, inspired by the moon walking across the wilderness night sky with a million stars. A romantic, she seeks to create stillness, meditatively taking her time to build layers of paint with delicate washes. She describes her creative process as an act of being.

Denise Paradise

Denise Paradise explores the seen and unseen mysteries of beings from afar, bringing her observations to our attention in a varied collection of paintings. "Many testimonies bear witness to the desert being a place of contact and sightings of otherworldly beings in the vast star-filled skies." Denise sees interaction with these beings as a collaboration of higher thinking and a teaching between worlds.

Tom O'Brien

At 80, Tom O'Brien discovered plein air landscape painting as a hobby. His collection of often smaller, charming, spontaneous landscapes are keepsake treasures.

Laura Hackney

A nature conservationist, Laura Hackney addresses the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss in her work, along with her own life experiences. She scours the wilderness and faraway places for shells, fish bones, fossils, and unusual discarded finds, which she incorporates into her artwork. Laura's work defines what it means to be an Outlier artist.

In Pins and Needles , she transforms wartime wooden shoes into an expression of neuropathy. "I connect my own medical history with the history carried by these shoes." The wooden shoes are lined with fish bones collected from the Salton Sea, glass beads, dye, and pearls, shifting the imagery from suffering to something beautiful. Laura describes the work as "a celebration of my legs, my ability to walk and the gratitude I feel each day."

JD Stowell

JD Stowell's paintings on basic, rough white cardboard define the Outlier artist who wants to create bare and raw. There is no artist statement here, but none is needed.

Stowell's portraits insist visually on immediate, present emotion that the artist catches almost cinematically: a fleeting but poignantly painted snapshot, deftly caught with economical brushstrokes and minimal line work, like a Japanese haiku.

ARhAyas PSoon AllureA

PSoon straddles several artistic genres. He has a place in Outlier Art, but he can also be considered a fine art artist. He once had a career in architecture, which he happily walked away from.

In A.N.U.B.I.S. (Hall of 2 Truths) , an assemblage collage sculpture, we see his technical mastery of collage and sculptural assemblage combined in two works about Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of mummification, funerary rites, and the protection of graves. Anubis escorted the dead through the perilous journey to the afterlife and is sometimes called the Lord of the Dead.

PSoon's collage techniques are refined. He explains, "Collage making allows for transmutation and transfiguring by taking negatively induced conditioning images and words through juxtaposition to transform into consciousness raising and melting pots for the mind, heart and journeying of the soul."

This is sophisticated art, and I believe an important work for this artist. Highly collectible.

Looking Ahead

Our world today is profoundly altered by digital technology and its far-reaching effect on the mediums of artistic expression. The idea of self-taught art could be radically revised in the 21st century. I hope this genre of Outlier Art survives the passage of changing times.

The Outliers is on view at The Gallery at The Palms through Nov. 1, 2026.