Raw Vision Magazine

Bangkok’s Wat Pariwat is embellished with intricate, mosaic figures that are outside of expectations and yet in keeping with Buddhist teachings Visitors stop short at what they see. Popeye wedged into a corner, his outstretched arms braced against the walls. Captain Hook standing high on top of a column. Wolverine, knuckle-bladed, crouching. Along borders are Arachne, Medusa and Cyclops; above the eaves, elegant butterfly-like beings hover.

In Mina Mond’s “medicine art” – under the layers of mysticism and religion, woman and reality, trauma and mortality – beats her own troubled heart Some painters draw on myth. Mina Mond seems to work from within it. Her pictures do not quote folklore, religion, esotericism or history from a safe distance; they proceed as though these worlds are still contiguous with our own, still capable of breaking through the surface of ordinary life.

The work of three artists – Baya Mahieddine, Chaïbia Talal and Seyni Awa Camara – is an affirmation of womanhood as well as a reflection of their personal suffering Three self-taught artists from Africa – Baya Mahieddine, Chaïbia Talal and Seyni Awa Camara – all spontaneously put on paper, or modelled in clay, figures inspired by dreams, fantasies or divine revelation. Each, in her own way, invented an intimate and original universe, created from a personal perspective.

When a Tennessee artist began to construct his very own castle in which to live, he did not envisage it would be requisitioned for a higher purpose In the plush green and hilly countryside around the small, eastern Tennessee town of Greenback (population 1600), a handmade, metal sign nailed to a fence reads “Castle” and points visitors onto a narrow, gravel road densely-lined with trees, brush and a few small houses. Several hand-painted wooden signs are dotted along the roadside.

Spanish medium and artist Josefa Tolrà made it her life’s mission to spread love and to make the invisible visible with her drawings and embroidery After becoming a “mechanical transmitter” – as she identified herself – Josefa Tolrà drew and wrote as an antidote to sadness and depression.

For years, celebrated Gugging Artists August Walla and Johann Hauser lived and created side by side – but very much apart On a hill at the edge of Maria Gugging – a small village near the Lower Austrian town of Klosterneuburg – is an imposing, white-stuccoed building painted with a huge, blue star with four uneven points. The Museum Gugging building with Johann Hauser’s huge, blue star The building was once the children’s pavilion ward in the state-run Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic.

He is known for his intricate paintings telling epic stories but it is the waistcoat that he wears every day that is a living reliquary of the artist’s own life Joe Coleman is instantly recognisable, not just because of his many self-portraits, but also because of the vest (or “waistcoat” as it is called in some parts of the world) that he is rarely seen without.

Born from Jean Dubuffet’s extraordinary donation of outsider creations, the Collection de l’Art Brut celebrates its 50th anniversary, looking back and forward The elegant, understated building that houses the Collection de l’Art Brut sits in the urban landscape of the Swiss city of Lausanne. Originally a patrician residence dating fromthe eighteenth century, it has been the home of the Collection – which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – since 1976.

With metal scraps and the eye of a perfectionist, Polish born creator Stanley Szwarc crafted thousands of intricately embellished objects, no two ever alike Stanley Szwarc created boxes, vases, crosses and other objects from cast-off stainless steel, decorating each with geometric accents of spotwelded quarter-inch dots, circles of bigger diameters, cylinders and squares, perforated strips, and a variety of other shapes.

Austrian Johann Meduna carved wood obsessively – almost to its destruction – in an ongoing dialogue with the material, himself and possibly the viewer Ever since the construction of Vienna’s Narrenturm (Fool's Tower) – Europe’s first purpose-built psychiatric institution – in 1784, during the reign of Emperor Joseph II, science has undertaken research into the difference between so-called sick and healthy people, especially in relation to the brain.