b"Mehrdad Rashidi was born in the town of Sari in Northern Iran in 1963. At the age of20 he fled Iran because of his strongly held political views and settled in Germany. In2006, for no particular reason, he began to draw. He found it relaxed him and madehim feel happy, he also thought of his homeland, his childhood and easier times in hislife whilst he doodled on any piece of paper that came to hand. Using old notebooks,envelopes, shopping receipts and discarded advertising pamphlets, he gradually, inwhat seems to be an obsessive and compulsive surge of creativity, began to producean extraordinary, and hauntingly beautiful body of work. This outpouring has contin-ued to this day, the momentum, and the joy it has given the artist have not ceased.Striking imagery and expressive detail Eyes, noses, lips, features perhaps,combine in the work of this genuine out- faces just about, looping all over thesider artist. A wonderful discovery. page in suits of bodyless armour. Thebattalion is ready but clearly unable toJohn Maizels: Founder of Raw VisionMagazine,author of Raw Creation: Outsider Art & Beyond move, a doodle adrift in the land of thewell-formed, the well-intentioned andThese are truly beautiful works, with a the well-behaved.subtlety and uncanny presence that James Brett. Director, The Museum of Everythingspeak anew with each approach fromthe open viewer. They are windows into 'His sketches. are tokens of an insightanother psychic place. into the mechanisms of desire and po-Professor Colin Rhodes is Dean of Sydney College of etic transcendence'.the Arts, University of Sydney and author of OutsiderArt: Spontaneous Alternatives Professor Roger Cardinal, author of Outsider ArtThe 'master of stitching,' Mehrdad The visual shock of this powerful workRashidi, creates human or animal fig- combines a sense both of confinementures by a subtle technique: onto the sur- and of fullness. As if we were at the endface of the drawing he transposes a of a long path leading to a biologicalprocess akin to knitting, tracing with his metamorphosis, or, one might say, topen a network of stitches, which, inter- the peaceful reconciling of animalwoven one with another, give birth to species into a single hybrid body, asdelicate, haunting images. beautiful as it is unsettling.Sarah Lombardi. Director, Collection de l'Art Brut, Bruno Decharme.ABCD Collection, ParisHENRY BOXER GALLERYwww.outsiderart.co.uk Cover Image 16 x 12 ins ink on paper. Collection Museum of Everything, London"