Press Release: Bottoms, The Colorful Apocalypse
Chronicling a pilgrimage that drew Bottoms into the lives of evangelical outsider artists across the country, The Colorful Apocalypse exposes us not only to disquieting works of art—paintings of Satanic brides, crucifixion scenes, world destroying-conspiracies, and other apocalyptic parables—but also to the fervent passions and unsettling apparitions from which they arise. Are the untrained artists who create such works truly inspired visionaries? Are they simply delusional? Is delusion itself a legitimate category of artistic vision? Faced with these vexed questions, Bottoms assumes the role of a preternaturally eloquent explorer of the gray area that separates sanity from insanity. Weaving together his conversations with such artists as Myrtice West, Norbert Kox, and William Thomas Thompson with his own poignant reflections, he ultimately crafts a series of searching biographical portraits that testify to the chaos of human emotion and the power of art to give shape to our lives.
Read the press release. We also have an interview with the author and an excerpt from the book.