The drawings of faces are spooky with their oversize eyes; the sketches of material objects are intriguing windows into a world that never existed outside the imagination of the artist. They were produced by James Edward Deeds Jr., locked up in a Missouri mental institution and subjected to electro shock, sedatives and other mid-20th century psychiatric barbarities prescribed as treatment for “dementia praecox.” Deeds executed the series of drawings assembled in The Electric Pencil on discarded state hospital stationery. They are remarkable for what Richard Goodman, in the book’s introduction, called “the peaceable Midwest kingdom, the docile Henri Rousseau-like world of tigers, plumed hats, and wispy trees” in contrast to the hard edges of his confined life.
