A selection of drawings by outsider artist Joseph Elmer Yoakum of various mountains and landscapes around the world, from Palestine to Nevada.
Joseph Elmer Yoakum (1891–1972) was a self-taught African American painter who also claimed to be of French and Cherokee descent.
In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph E. Yoakum reported having a dream that inspired him to take up drawing. The retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works. When he died in 1972 at age 81, Yoakum's drawings had been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Whitney.
Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus. He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States and internationally, becoming intimately familiar with landscapes around the world. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fuelled his deeply spiritual artistic vision decades later.
When he began to put that vision to paper in his apartment on Chicago’s South Side in the early 1960s, Yoakum quickly developed a unique visual language, independent and distinct from other artists in the city, such as those involved in the flourishing Black Arts Movement or the up-and-coming Chicago Imagist group.
His drawings are predominantly uncanny looking landscapes made with ballpoint pen, coloured pencil, pastel, and watercolour then inscribed with locations from all seven continents. The colours are otherworldly and the lines flow like waves and rivers, creating a mystical effect, reflecting the scope of his travels as well as his idiosyncratic and poetic vision of the natural world.
Published by Nieves. 24 pages. 25.5 × 19.5 cm, Paperback, 2024.