WBror Morgan Verner Åkerman was a Swedish sculptor; primarily of small figures.
WMindy Alper is an American artist who lives in Greater Los Angeles. Her drawings, paintings, and sculptures focus on the representation of people, either in portraiture or as figures who embody aspects of her inner experience. She has been praised for her ability to articulate complex and profound emotions in her work. Among her art media are paint, ink, marker pen, papier-mâché, clay, and wood. She was a performance artist in the 1980s, and she plays guitar and violin. Alper is represented by Rosamund Felsen Gallery.
WSusan Felicity Austin is a British disabled artist working in multimedia, performance and installation. Austin is best known for her work "Creating the Spectacle!" in which she uses a specially modified wheelchair to move underwater, using scuba diving equipment; it was performed as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Austin's underwater wheelchair has been seen by more than 150 million people worldwide. Austin lives in Devon, south west England.
WFrederick Bean "Tex" Avery was an American animator and director, known for producing and directing animated cartoons during the golden age of American animation. His most significant work was for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, where he was crucial in the creation and evolution of famous animated characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, The Wolf, Red Hot Riding Hood and George and Junior.
WDorothy Berry is an Australian artist working in the genres of Outsider art, and Art Brut, based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is known primarily for her densely composed depictions of animals and birdlife, executed in pastel. Berry resides in the Melbourne suburb of Kingsbury and has worked from her Northcote-based studio at Arts Project Australia since 1985. Berry's work has been represented in four solo exhibitions, and has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally in group shows, including ‘My Puppet, My Secret Self’, at the Substation, Newport; ‘Inside Out/Outside In’, Access Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and ‘Turning the Page’, Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and MADMusée, Liège, Belgium, and the Centre for Australian Art.
WArthur Bispo do Rosário was a Brazilian outsider artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he lived in a psychiatric institution in Rio de Janeiro for 50 years, where he created works of art with found objects, as part of a "divine mission". His works gained recognition among art critics when they were first displayed at the Venice Biennale in 1995.
WCharles Thomas Close was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer. He made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others, which hang in collections internationally. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera. He adapted his painting style and working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed by an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery. He died on August 19, 2021.
WPaul Cummins MBE is an English artist from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, who produces landscape installations using ceramic flowers.
WMarco Polo "Mark" di Suvero is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
WChris Tally Evans is a Welsh disabled artist, actor, director, and writer. He trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as a performer and graduated from Trinity College, London, with a teaching diploma.
WTommy Hollenstein is an American abstract impressionist painter and found object sculptor. A lifelong quadriplegic, Hollenstein has become a highly respected disabled artist who utilizes the tires of his wheelchair instead of traditional painting methods to create his works. Hollenstein has numerous celebrity and art collector patrons, and his art has appeared in numerous private and public installations throughout the United States. He is also involved in philanthropy, donating paintings and the proceeds of his sales to numerous charitable organizations.
WMartha Ann Honeywell (1786–1856) was an American disabled artist who produced silhouettes and embroidery using only her mouth and her toes, often in public performances.
WDaniel Dale Johnston was an American singer-songwriter and visual artist regarded as a significant figure in outsider, lo-fi, and alternative music scenes. Most of his work consisted of cassettes recorded alone in his home, and his music was frequently cited for its "pure" and "childlike" qualities.
WMagdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.
WAlison Lapper MBE is a British artist. She is the subject of the sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant, which was displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square from September 2005 until late 2007. She and her late son Parys featured in the BBC docuseries Child of Our Time.
WMaud Kathleen Lewis was a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. Lewis lived most of her life in poverty in a small house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, achieving national recognition in 1964 and 1965. She is best known for her cheerful paintings of landscapes, animals, and flowers, which offer a nostalgic and optimistic vision of her native province. Several books, plays and films have since been produced about her. Lewis remains one of Canada's most celebrated folk artists; her works and the restored Maud Lewis House are displayed in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
WVíctor Meliveo is a Spanish photographer and video artist. After an accident he lost most of his vision. Throughout his professional career he has won several awards highlighting the Malaga Film Festival Prize (2006).
WFrank James Moore was an American performance artist, shaman, poet, essayist, painter, musician and Internet/television personality who experimented in art, performance, ritual, and shamanistic teaching since the late 1960s.
WRosaleen (Rosie) Moriarty-Simmonds, OBE, is a British businesswoman, artist and disability rights campaigner. She was born without arms or legs after her mother was prescribed thalidomide in pregnancy.
WKathleen "Kay" Moir Morris was a Canadian painter and member of the Beaver Hall Group.
WMabel Pakenham-Walsh was a British painter, sculptor and designer, and pioneering female artist in post-war European figurative art. She worked in many mediums, but is particularly well known for her colourful wooden relief sculptures. Her work was significantly influenced by primitive and outsider art, and created primarily from recycled materials, earning her recognition as an early eco artist.
WPablo Pineda is a Spanish actor who received the Concha de Plata Award at the 2009 San Sebastián International Film Festival for his performance in the film Yo, también. In the film he plays the role of a university graduate with Down syndrome, which is quite similar to his real life.
WCornelius Ary Renan (1857–1900) was a French Symbolist painter and anti-clerical social activist.
WGerhardt Wilhelm von Reutern was a Baltic-German military officer and painter who co-founded the Artists' Colony at Willingshausen.
WYinka Shonibare is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. Because he has a physical disability that paralyses one side of his body, Shonibare uses assistants to make works under his direction.
WJoseph Shuster was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1.
WAntoñita Singla, is a Spanish-born gypsy flamenco dancer and actress. She often went by the stage name Antoñita La Singla or simply "La Singla" but sometimes its written as Antonia Singla.
WSamuel Songo was a Rhodesian artist., known for his works depicting African iconography and traditional African life. Songo was disabled and used a wheelchair. He spent most of his life working through the Cyrene Mission School, producing art on the behest of Frank McEwen, a British expatriate who helped establish and later ran the Rhodesian National Gallery of Art. Songo's early work consisted of occasional paintings and sculpture, however, in later years, he worked almost exclusively in the classic traditions of Shona stone sculpture.
WRandy Souders is an American artist and a disability rights advocate.
WJessica Thom is a British theatre-maker and comedian best known for Touretteshero, an alter-ego and project aimed at increasing awareness of Tourette's Syndrome, the neurological condition which she was diagnosed with in her early twenties. The first Touretteshero production, Backstage in Biscuit Land debuted at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014. The show won critical acclaim and has since toured across the UK and internationally, including various performances across North America and Australia. Thom has also made numerous appearances on British television, notably an interview on Russell Howard's Good News which has garnered more than 995,000 YouTube views as of August 2019, and was reported on by The Independent and Metro newspapers.
WMoses Ernest Tolliver was an American artist. He was known as "Mose T", after the signature on his paintings, signed with a backwards "s".
WComte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colorful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times.
WMaría Dolors Vázquez Aznar was a Spanish realist painter and lawyer.
WJesús Vidal is a Spanish actor. In 2019 he won Medallas del Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos and Goya Award in the 33rd edition for Best New Actor for Campeones.
WKaren Sue Wheeler is an American artist who was born with a neurodegenerative condition called spinal muscular atrophy which causes muscle wasting. She uses a technique called "layering" that resembles colored pencil. Each painting that she produces takes from 150–500 hours to complete.
WWesley Lawrence Willis was an American singer-songwriter and visual artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, Willis began a career as an underground singer-songwriter in the outsider music tradition. Willis' songs are typically partially spoken in an MC style, and partially sung in a nasal and out-of-tune manner reminiscent of punk rock vocals. They feature bizarre, humorous and sometimes obscene or absurd lyrics sung over melodies created by using the auto accompaniment feature on his Technics KN keyboard. His songs cover a wide variety of topics, with mental illness and consumerism being the most prominent themes.
WBrian Douglas Wilson is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude, and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the 20th century. His work is distinguished for its vocal harmonies, complex orchestrations, and introspective or ingenuous themes. Wilson is also known for his lifelong struggles with mental illness.
WMurry Gage Wilson was an American songwriter, talent manager, record producer, and music publisher best known as the father of the Beach Boys' Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson. After the band's formation in 1961, Murry became their first manager, and in 1962, he founded their publishing company, Sea of Tunes, with Brian. Later in his life, Wilson was accused of physically and verbally abusing his children, charges which he denied.
WStephen Wiltshire is a British architectural artist and autistic savant. He is known for his ability to draw a landscape from memory after seeing it just once. His work has gained worldwide popularity.
WWallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, widely known for his work on EC Comics's titles such as Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and MAD Magazine from its inception in 1952 until 1964, as well as for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and work for Warren Publishing's Creepy. He drew a few early issues of Marvel's Daredevil and established the title character's distinctive red costume. Wood created and owned the long-running characters Sally Forth and Cannon.
WJulia Zisman is a Russian-born Israeli painter.