Artists Take Free Reins

Bill Healy’s three collages cover three subjects, from the real to the imaginary, but are united by their distinctive personalities, half playful, half unsettling. In each face, there are a few delightfully recontextualized shapes. In Self-Portrait, the grimace is an Amazon smile turned upside down. One of King Nothing’s eyes is a bowl of soup. The middle of Princess Leia’s face is a tire. It’s the kind of lateral thinking that marks the most engaging collage art, and in another place, another space, the artist might be parlaying it into a social media following. But Healy — along with the rest of the artists in the show — isn’t on social media, and the work might not have made it to a gallery wall without a keen eye paying attention.

The pieces are part of ​“Self-Taught,” running now at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art through Jan. 5 and featuring works by artists Bula, Serge D., Bill Healy, Karen Karen, and Richard Knowles. ​“Self-Taught” was born out of a meeting between curators Emily Weiskopf and Michael Shortell. Weiskopf is an artist; Shortell a gallery owner and framer. Weiskopf stopped in at Shortell Framing, in Hartford, and noticed a few canvases in the shop. ​“What I thought would be a quick stop turned into staying to listen to the many stories about the artists and their works,” Weiskopf writes in an accompanying statement. She learned that artist Serge D’s canvases were ​“originally dropped off at Manchester Community College to be painted over” by students, but Shortell saved them. Shortell also came across artist Karen Karen on the street, ​“only using colored pencil.” Shortell gave her ​“oil pastels which proved to be transformational to her visions.”

Shortell’s collection was a monument to artists of all stripes, many of whom had never exhibited their work. ​“What was discovered between us,” Weiskopf writes, ​“was a mutual excitement, love, passion, and commitment to supporting artists and their work first, with no interest to their CV, or training, social media.”

“We collaborated on this show to support ​‘outsider’ artists, those who have been self taught,” Weiskopf writes. ​“These artists, however, have never thought of themselves as outsiders.”

There’s a certain poignancy in knowing that Serge D’s canvases were slated to be painted over in an art class, as a more chaotic undercurrent runs beneath their obvious charms. The fields, the trees, the house, and the lake in Summer Home are bucolic enough, giving viewers what they might expect from the title. But it’s at odds with the sky Serge D paints overhead, roiling, a little intense. The artist paints the summer home as a place that’s also a shelter from elements that aren’t always friendly, even when it’s warmer out.

Viewers might also be grateful to Shortell for giving Karen Karen more vivid art supplies, as her creations are phantasmagoric in their vivid colors and busy compositions. If Serge D suggested a little chaos, Karen Karen gives it free rein. Perhaps the humans in the picture are unperturbed, but the artist leaves the viewer pretty sure that the animals have the run of the place. Are they destroying the furniture? Might feeding them result in the loss of a finger? The bright shapes and obvious menace create a dissonance that keeps a viewer looking for even more detail.

Juxtaposed with Karen Karen’s chaotic visions, Richard Knowles leans into the pastoral, without artifice or sentimentality. The aptly titled Vermont is a painting of just that, a scene that could be in several towns north of New Haven at a certain time of year. We are accustomed to thinking of outsider art as moving in more kinetic directions, expressing an energy the upwardly seeking professional art establishment considered too unbridled, too intense. But Knowles reminds us that not every artist who doesn’t show their work regularly is like that. Some are just trying to portray the world as they find it.

“Self-Taught” runs at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., through Jan. 5. Visit ECOCA’s website for hours and more information.