Damian Le Bas is an artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 associated with the Outsider Art

Outsider Art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...

 label, a term used to refer collectively to self-taught, mentally ill

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

 or otherwise unconventional artists working outside the confines of the art establishment. The genre is also known by the name "Art Brut", a term coined by the French artist Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...

 in c.1945 to refer to works he collected that were "raw" or "ugly". Since 1987 several of Le Bas' pieces are held in the Musgrave-Kinley Collection of works by key Outsider Artists, currently administered by Monika Kinley. The Collection includes examples by Scottie Wilson

Scottie Wilson

Scottie Wilson , born Louis Freeman, was a Scottish outsider artist known particularly for his highly detailed style. Starting his artistic career at the age of 44, his work was admired and collected by the likes of Jean Dubuffet and Pablo Picasso and is generally accepted to be in the forefront...

, Madge Gill

Madge Gill

Madge Gill , born Maude Ethel Eades, was an English outsider and visionary artist.-Early years:Born an illegitimate child in East Ham, Essex, , she spent much of her early years in seclusion and was placed in an orphanage at the age of 9...

 and other notable Outsiders.

Le Bas' Irish Traveller

Irish Traveller

Irish Travellers are a traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin, who maintain a separate language and set of traditions. They live predominantly in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.-Etymology:...

 heritage forms a recurrent theme in his work: recently, he has explored the claustrophobia experienced by nomads in modern European society by mixing cartography with an idiosyncratic tribal portraiture.

Le Bas has exhibited frequently in the U.K, and his works have been shown in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and elsewhere. Le Bas' work has been included in both Prague Biennale 3 and the Roma Pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

.

He lives and works with his wife, the Romany artist Delaine Le Bas

Delaine Le Bas

Delaine Le Bas is a British Artist from a Romany background and wife of artist Damian Le Bas.Delaine Le Bas has shown her art extensively both in the UK and internationally, including at the International Festival of Singular Art, Roquevaire, France; the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore,...

, in West Sussex

West Sussex

West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...

 on the south coast of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.