Car Boot Sale Art

Here's something else I love to collect, as well as Found Photographs. In recent years we've scoured and haggled our way through Car Boot Sales of the North West of England. Now we've got this strange collection of paintings in the hallway. Paintings that no one loves - not even their original owners. What gets me about these is that they could easily have vanished forever.

They're bad - of course they are - but in a quite touching way. Often Outsider Art comes about when the artist has no training at all. They're pootling along in their own messy, merry way and producing work quite unlike anything else on Earth. Car Boot Sale paintings like these are a bit different. They are reminders and remnants of a stranger's one-time hobby or fad. Or it might have been an abiding passion. But it's gone now, and someone's flogging off their works for a few pounds.

Anyone else collect this stuff?

Here are two, for now.

I seem to gravitate to snowy scenes.

The first is Snow Hovel, as I call it. It's clearly meant to be an idyllic wintry retreat, deep in the woods. Cosy and nostalgic. But the weird geometry of that house makes you queasy, if you stare long enough. There are queer dimensional instabilities in this snowbound Grimms Fairy Tale world. I like their urgent wolfhound, dragging the old couple home. But what's with their strange pig-child? He's wearing suede knickerbockers and a pork pie hat. He's staring blankly at the painter. It makes you feel like shouting out a warning. But I'm not sure who to.

The other's a more conventional and suburban scene in South Manchester. Someone here's had a few classes, you can tell. I love the atmosphere of this. It reminds me of skidding home on frozen slush with shopping bags, at that point in the day when it starts getting dark mid-afternoon. And I always wonder whose house that is bang in the middle. The artist's family? There's someone dashing over the slippery road towards it. Another figure struggling through snow towards home.

I'd love to know who painted these.

I'll post more soon.