Sufjan Stevens' 2010 album Age of Adz features art from the outsider Royal Robertson and also draws inspiration from Robertson. While the album is about Sufjan himself it explores themes from Robertson's life and work. Some of Robertson's work is on permanent collection at The American Visionary Art museum as well as several other museums. He died in 1997.
As a side note - he's really interesting to read about. He was born in 1936 and lived in Louisiana as a sign maker. Him and his wife had 11 children. She cheated on him, left him, took the kids and became a minister. He either was or became a self proclaimed prophet and had visions of aliens, the end days, etc. A lot of his art had to do with his wife or women in general.
I would have never known about Royal Robertson but after I got into Sufjan Stevens' and got the new album, a friend told me that he had heard that Sufjan was inspired by a schizophrenic artist.
The documentary Make is about several artists, including Royal Robertson.
MAKE the documentary from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
Age of Adz:
I should probably say here that I did google "outsider art" before I started to write up this post - if you need a refresher, here's the Wiki link:
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