Richard Greaves

b. 1952 · Beauce, Quebec, Canada

The anarchitect: he dismantled condemned barns plank by plank and rebuilt them in the forest as twenty impossible cabins, held together with knotted twine and no right angles at all.

The life

Greaves was born in Montreal in 1952 and in 1984 left his old life for a forest property in the Beauce region of Quebec. Around 1989 he began his great project: taking apart abandoned barns doomed to demolition, hauling the pieces to his land, and rebuilding them alone, without measuring instruments, using recycled nylon twine from local farmers instead of nails. The result was a constantly expanding environment of some twenty tilting cabins and shelters. The touring exhibition Anarchitect brought the work to Montreal, New York, Lausanne and Chicoutimi, though the forest site itself was later torn down.

The work

Buildings as sculpture: deliberately askew structures that look on the point of collapse yet stand, their asymmetry a declared war on the right angle. He also made an installation on the spot outside the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, and his work is held there and in Quebec collections including the Pulperie de Chicoutimi.

Why we love them

Every builder fights gravity with straight lines. Greaves fought it with knots and angles, and for years the forest was full of his victories.

Go deeper

• Richard Greaves at the Outsider Art Fair
• SPACES Archives
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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