Peter Charlie Bochero (Besharo)
Peter "Charlie" Bochero arrived in the United States in 1903 and settled on a farm in Leechburg, Pennsylvania. He maintained himself as a handyman, but apart from this led the life of a hermit. After his death it was discovered that he had spent the many reclusive years of his life as an artist. Approximately seventy paintings were found among his personal effects.

Augustin Lesage
Born in 1876 in Auchel, Norhtern France, Lesage worked as a miner. One day at the coal face, he heard a voice telling him he would become an artist. He began to paint, producing works of monumental symmetry and uncanny precision, which he claimed, were the responsibility of his spirit-guides. He demonstrated his art in spiritualist circles until his death in 1954.

A.G. Perifimou
Alexander Georgio was born on Cyprus in a village near the town of Nicosia in 1916. He took his father's nickname, "Perifimou" or "the famous one," when he began to be called an artist. In 1935 Perifimou moved to Britain, where he worked as a chef and tailor. He was called into service for Britain, at the outbreak of World War II and fought in North Africa, Malta and Italy. After the war, a chronic skin condition forced him into unemployment until 1973, when the British legion recommended Perifimou for the post of gallery guard at the Royal Academy. Eventually, he became a guard at the Tate Gallery, at which time he began to draw "out of boredom." Victor Musgrave, founder of the Outsider Archive, noticed Perifimou drawing on scraps of paper on a visit to the Tate at age sixty-five and moved to the country with his wife in 1990. He has willed the bulk of his work to his hometown village on Cyprus.

John Podhorsky
Active in California circa 1950, little is known of John Podhorsky. His body of extant work is extraordinarily small though quite fascinating. It consists of drawings and paintings on paper, generally of architectural fantasies, bridges, small machines, which are occasionally accompanied by animals and trees. His style is a curious blend of heavily labeled geometric blueprint, full of eccentric descriptions, and playful, curvilinear counterpoint which allows the artist free reign to embellish certain details and define his flowers, animals and foliage. It is likely that Podhorsky has an interest in building, woodworking or carpentry, so evident is his concern with structural details. But all is guesswork at this stage of our knowledge of his life and work, and it is only hoped that more of Podhorsky's story and art will eventually come to light.

Shafique Uddin
Shafique Uddin was born in 1962 in Beani Bazar, Bangladesh. In 1971, Uddin moved to London to live with his brother. He began painting at an early age and was encouraged to pursue a career in art by his teacher at Daneford School. He enrolled in a foundation diploma course at the Sir John Cass School of art in 1984. His works are densely patterned with electrified brushstrokes that give movement to his images. Uddin's iconography reflects his memories of Bangladesh and his current life in East London.

Joseph Yoakum
Joseph Yoakum was born circa 1886 on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. Yoakum traveled the globe as a circus hand and on steamliners working in their boiler rooms. He was married twice and spent his last years working in a single-room former barbershop in Chicago and died in 1973. He began to draw in 1962, at age 76, after a dream he called "a spirit unfoldment." His carefully titled landscapes from around the world show more places than he could ever have literally visited. These instinctive images have a compelling sense of conviction.