Outsider Artist Strokes It
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The Outsider Artist Brush Stroke The mere matter of putting on paint to any choosen surface by the eccentric outsider artist can be mysterious The power of John D’Agostino’s eccentric outsider brush stroke is the power of a spirit deep within the artist’s psyche. In his paintings there is a certain kind of outsider artist brush stroke that is both bold and bad. There are timid, halting brush strokes by some outsider artists with certain mental afflictions, but not the John Dog. |
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 I have a dirty old outsider artist dog. |
Somehow the John Dog’s brush strokes always start bravely and know where to go. Sometimes they bump into and spoil something else, (get over it, *** happens) or they may just wander about, or meld into another image. There are multi-colored brush strokes in the background which come up against weird heart-like heads and turn to get out of the way circling round and round in a maddening spin. |
| Thick or squirted marks which look like brush strokes and bring us back to paint. There are other lines and shapes which inspire a sense of vigor, direction, speed, fullness and all the varying sensations an eccentric outsider artist may wish to unconsciously express. Simple symbols and worn out cliches are twisted into sometimes layered compositions. The eccentric’s brush stroke itself must speak a language that might not be comprehensible to all.. It doesn’t count to the outsider artist whether you will or not understand it. |  |
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John Dog’s work is meaningful or it is empty rhetoric. It often seems to make no sense, is contradictory, the product of a confused and unfocused mind. And these are the qualities which keep him on the outside of the art world. But the canvas and it tells it tale. His art and his writing can be showy, shallow, mean, poignant, humorous, adolescent, rich, full, generous, and alive. Maybe he knows what is going on, but he hides it well. In analizing the structure of his art and writing a complex mind scape is revealed. |
| When the outsider artist’s mark is visible on the canvas it has a size, covers a certain area, a texture. They are very expressive in their own way. It has its speed and its direction. There is a lot it has of itself, and the strokes tell their tale in harmony with or in opposition of motive of the the eccentric art picture. |  |
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On account of the shiny character of oil paint it is necessary to adhere to a general movement in brush direction to avoid a stroke which will shine. This is one of the reasons the John Dog uses acrylic paint, often with a matte finish. If the John Dog arbitarily paints an outsider art piece on glass he uses a wide variety of paints for their effect; poster for dry cracking, glossy enamel for a gooey shine, semi-matte acrylics for heavy texture. Even though the picture hangs in its proper light reflections are unavoidable and this makes them difficult to photograph. So the images on his eccentric outsider art websites may have distortions. |
