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By the age of sixteen Dwight Mackintosh's mental disabilities had become unmanageable and he was institutionalised. He was released from the state hospital after fifty-six years and, soon after, registered for art classes through his day programme at the Creative Growth Art Centre in California. On his first visit to the studio, Mackintosh filled the top half of a piece of paper with an almost entirely indecipherable script. Only his name and the words 'boy' and 'girl' were partially legible. On the bottom half of this paper he depicted three men with halos, endowed with exaggerated penises. Mackintosh's preferred instrument was a black felt-tip pen, and throughout his first year at the Centre he continued to draw line-based, sexually explicit imagery of 'boys' and 'buildings.' Eventually his repertoire of images broadened to include yellow school buses, animals and musical instruments.

Long yellow bus 1981
Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection
Pen and tempera on calendar
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