ORGANISATION OF ILLUSTRATORS COUNCIL Singapore Illustrators and Illustration

Henry Darger, janitor by day, epic novelist and illustrator by night. Illustration superhero who lived in his own fantasy world his whole life.

Although Darger is one of the more famous examples within Art Brut, he remains relatively unknown outside the art world. I only stumbled upon his work when I was researching Jean Dubuffet (edit: thanks boss!).

Obsessively writing a 15 000+ page fantasy novel titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion and illustrating scenes within the novel with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings, he lead a secret double life that no one discovered till the point of his death.

(click to enlarge)

His illustration technique was entirely self-taught, and he often used collage and worked on big compositions measuring anything from 4-12 foot canvases in his cramped apartment. His figures were almost entirely traced from scraps of cut-outs from magazines, newspapers, etc that he scavenged in the dumps, enlarged or shrunk by photocopying to fit his illustrations.

“He started writing at the age of 19 and we don’t believe that he stopped until he died at the age of 81. What you’re looking at in this photograph is one man’s life work. Thirty thousand pages of text comprised of four different manuscripts, a few novels, an autobiography, and then a ten-year project.” American Folk Art Museum. © Kiyoko Lerner

Super awesome and completely inspirational la, Henry Darger.

Additional Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger
http://www.hammergallery.com/Artists/darger/Darger.htm
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/intherealms/index.html

ps: welcoming all donations to help purchase this book XD >> http://www.amazon.com/Henry-Darger-Art-Selected-Writings/dp/0847822842