This week’s artist showcase features the work of Gary Mayer. If you relate in some way to the term outsider art and would like to see your work have its own showcase on the blog, please email kdoutsiderart@yahoo.com.

Unbridled
When did your interest in art/creating begin?
At a very early age – there are a lot of artists in my family.

Love and Pogo
What is your starting point for each piece?
Sometimes I can see them in advance sometimes I work withe a theme or even a shape or being and that’s enough to begin a dream an invention.

Spectral Dance
Who/what influences your work?
Nature, people, other people’s comments on my art – they make a connection and I see possibility in it.

Unrepentant Nature
What do you hope the viewer gets from your work?
I hope it sends them some surprising place or connects to some experience in them not necessarily pleasant but vivid.

Zu Runs Rampant
What do you think about the term outsider art? Is there a term that you think works better?
I think a lot of art is outsider art that arises out of a necessity or even a compulsion to express and not a strategy to succeed in a narrow field that most of the art world is.

Bamboozled
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on some large sculptures of monsters. There has always been some exaggeration and distortion in my work and I’m taking it to a place that’s more literal and hopefully fun.

Dionysus
Where do you see your work taking you in the future?
I just ride the wave of possibility that this or that detail or moment in my previous work suggests and takes me all sorts of places I couldn’t predict and I find that kind of thrilling.