George Widener is a self-taught artist who employs his mathematical/calculating capability to create art ranging from complex calendars and numerical palindrome

Palindrome

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....

s to Rembrandt-like antiquarian landscapes to Asian scrolls.

Collections

His work can be found in many private and public 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...

 collections, including the Bruno Decharme ABCD Collection in Paris, The American Folk Art Museum

American Folk Art Museum

The American Folk Art Museum is a museum devoted to American folk art, as well as the work of international self-taught artists. It has branches at 45 West 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in Midtown Manhattan .In May 2011 the Museum of Modern Art bought its 53rd Street location...

, The Art Collection of the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute

MIND Institute

The UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute research and treatment center affiliated with the University of California, Davis, with facilities located on the UC Davis Medical Center campus in Sacramento, California...

, and The Collection de l’Art Brut. Widener has exhibited at the Jan Krugier Gallery, Salon du Dessins Contemporain, Kunsthaus Kannen (Münster), the Islands of Genius exhibition (for prodigious savants) and others, and shows at the New York Outsider Art Fair, when New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

art critic Roberta Smith

Roberta Smith

Roberta Smith is an art critic for the New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art.Born in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. Her career in the arts started in 1968 while an undergraduate summer intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in...

 proclaimed that the artist was “one of the Outsider Art Fair’s most significant recent discoveries”. George is also the subject of a recently published (2009) book The Art of George Widener by Roger Cardinal. Speaking at an October 2008 hallmark event organized under the auspices of the Royal Society and the British Academy on the subjects of autism and creativity, Cardinal illustrated and detailed the 'truly visionary alternative worlds of George Widener".

George Widener lives in the mountain town of Waynesville, North Carolina

Waynesville, North Carolina

Waynesville is a town in and the county seat of Haywood County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest town in Haywood County and the largest in Western North Carolina west of Asheville. Waynesville is located about or 50 km southwest of Asheville between the Great Smoky and Blue...

 and travels abroad frequently. He is represented in London by the Henry Boxer Gallery and in New York City by the Ricco/Maresca Gallery.

Selected exhibitions

• Jan Krugier (New York)*
• Kunsthaus Kannen (Munster)*
• Salon du Dessins Contemporain (Paris)*
• New York Outsider Art Fair *
• The Islands of Genius Exhibition (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; for prodigious savants)

External links

• Selection of artwork by George Widener from the Ricco/Maresca Gallery (New York).
• Selection of artwork by George Widener from the Henry Boxer Gallery (London).
• George Widener's website
• George Widener a multiply gifted savant
• Animula Vagula
• Outsiderart.uk.com
• Henry Boxer Gallery
• Raw Vision" article on Widener