An amiga dragged me along to see the Martin Ramírez show that recently opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and I am so glad she did! I had never heard of him before, but now he ranks among my favorite artists.

The works in the show were incredible and inspiring. Ramírez made them while locked in an insane asylum, gluing together paper he dug out of the trash at night with mashed potatoes, oatmeal and spit (among various other substances). He drew them using mostly pencil, at times incorporating crayon, tempera paint, colored pencil, collage or whatever he managed to get his hands on. He repeated shapes and lines within drawings, and he repeated drawings themselves, with only slight variations between them. His main themes were a guy on horseback, trains and tunnels, and the Virgin Mary. Some of them have cars in them, some even look like VW vans. Most of the works in the show are quite large. I liked the Madonnas best.

Art made by people without formal artistic training is referred to as "outsider" or self-taught art. Ramírez would fit into this category, although some of his design elements may lead one to wonder. He was a Mexican immigrant who migrated to the United States in the 1920s to try to find work mining and on the railroads to send money back to support his family in Jalisco, Mexico. He didn't talk much while he was in the mental hospital, although he reportedly had a pleasant demeanor. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, tending toward catatonia.

Some of the drawings seem to have a subtle art nouveau characteristic to them. Some of the horses reminded me of Picasso. It leads me to wonder if Ramírez had been exposed to his work, or if there was a sort of collective consciousness going on that they were both tapped into.

Ramírez's works are both accessible and expressive, and they struck me as happy. They spoke to me about things I could relate to, as my son is hard core into trains right now, and the churches and Madonnas harkened back to the time I spent in Nicaragua.

As my friend and I were on our way out of the museum, and studying a Ramírez card for sale in the gift shop, a woman asked us if we didn't know what those flowers were in the drawing. We had no clue. She said they were peyote buttons. Hmmm, very interesting.