Outsider Artist Albert Louden

Albert Louden (b.1943, England)

Raw Vision Magazine refers to Albert Louden as “the outsider who was allowed in”. Louden was born in Blackpool, England. When his parents separated, he moved with his mother where he now lives alone. He left school at the age of fifteen and had many jobs around the city, usually involving truck driving. Once in a while he would paint, but it wasn't until he was 21 on a trip to the Alps, that he became seriously inspired. Sitting in a cable car high above the clouds gave him a new perspective, an abstraction of reality that he hadn’t seen before. He began to paint houses and landscapes and eventually figures, morphing them into a variety of contorted shapes while maintaining human elements that made them recognizable. Louden described his first drawings as "internal landscapes", images of people that were based on reality but were also extensions of what he saw in his mind. His works are done with oils, pastels, acrylics and watercolors; all mediums that he taught himself to use.

In 1979 Victor Musgrave mounted England’s first major show of outsider artists at the Hayward gallery in London. He visited Louden’s home and studio, providing the artist with the encouragement that he needed. Since his discovery by Musgrave, his work has been shown in exhibitions worldwide.

Selected Permanent Collections:
Site de la creation franche, Begles, France
Arts Council of Great Britain
Collection l'art brut, Lausanne, Switzerland
Collection de L'Aracine at Villeneuve d’Ascq, Museum of
Modern Art of Lille, France
The Anthony Petullo collection, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

Judy A Saslow Gallery