Drawing outsider artists in

Ben Augustus’s “Nudes” is one of 70 works created by self-taught artists at Pure Vision Arts this month.

By Vivienne Leheny

Jessica Park’s vividly-hued and perfectly-pitched acrylic rendering of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew — the architectural behemoth lurking at 86th Street and West End Avenue — captures something essential about the landmark structure. Her detailed and imaginative take on the church’s bell-less tower conjures a sense of divinity at least as persuasive as any sermon delivered from a pulpit. And the painting’s title, “St. Paul’s and St. Andrew’s Methodist Church and the Migraine Type Lightning and the Elves,” is just as inspired.

Ms. Park is one of 24 American and Dutch artists whose work will appear in the “Urban Visionaries” exhibition, opening with a public reception at Pure Vision Arts in Chelsea on Wednesday, January 24th. The exhibition presents approximately 70 works created by self-taught artists, each of whom has some form of developmental disability. The talented and prolific Ms. Parks, for instance, has autism.

The “Urban Visionaries” exhibition, which is held in conjunction with the 14th Annual Outsider Art Fair, is a joint effort of Pure Vision Arts and the Netherlands-based art studio known as Atelier Herenplaats out of Rotterdam, and Kunst & Vliegwerk of Leiden. These three studios are committed to nurturing and promoting the work of gifted and developmentally disabled artists who might not otherwise find their way to a larger audience via the traditional art school path.

The artworks created by the “Urban Visionaries” stand on their own merits. William Britt, one of the Pure Vision artists featured in the exhibition, is a still life and landscape painter whose work is included in the private collections of Prince Charles, Nancy Reagan, Mario Cuomo and the Emperor of Japan. The paintings of Leon McCutcheon and Susan Brown have been exhibited at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City and the City Museum of Washington, D.C., and Ms. Brown has also exhibited at the Carnegie Institute. Among the Dutch artists represented are Atelier Herenplaats’ Jaco Kranendonk, whose cityscapes of Rotterdam bristle with movement, and Kunst & Vleigwerk’s Ben Augustus, whose canvas is populated by fabulous, red nudes.

The young and precocious Pure Vision Arts was established in 2002 by the Shield Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to providing educational opportunities to developmentally disabled New Yorkers. The studio offers arts classes, work space and supplies, and provides an exhibition gallery to display the work of emerging and increasingly established artists. Currently the studio draws about 150 regular participants.

All of the artwork shown in “Urban Visionaries” is available for purchase, with prices ranging from $50 to $3,000. In the case of the Pure Vision artists, 50% of the purchase goes directly to the artist while 50% is invested back into Pure Vision Arts to provide for scholarships, art supplies and studio maintenance.

Pure Vision Arts invites the public to attend the opening reception in order to get a good look at the city from the perspective of these “Outsider Artists.”

Their vision is revelatory.