Dwight Mackintosh

1906-1999 · Hayward, California, USA

Institutionalised at 16 and released at 72, Dwight Mackintosh walked into an Oakland studio in 1978 and began, at last, the artistic life that made him a giant of outsider art.

The life

Mackintosh was born in Hayward, California in 1906 and lived at home until he was 16, when he was sent to the first of three state psychiatric hospitals. He spent 56 years inside. On his release in 1978 he came to the newly founded Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland and drew there prolifically for two decades, championed by the art historian John MacGregor. He died in 1999.

The work

Flowing, kinetic line drawings of boys, buses and vehicles seen as if by x-ray, transparent and tightly composed, often crowned with rivers of looping, unreadable script. He recorded his own tonsillectomy in before-and-after sequences, and worked across drawing, painting, printmaking and ceramics. His work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne.

Why we love them

Fifty six years locked away, then twenty one years of pure line. Nobody ever drew a boy, a bus or a sentence quite like him.

Go deeper

• Dwight Mackintosh at the Outsider Art Fair
• Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
• 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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