Self-taught artist Della Wells was born in 1951 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a child, Wells created stories to escape the uncertain realities caused by her mother’s mental illness and her father’s rage. She eventually used these stories to inspire the collage art she creates today. Wells’s work has appeared in various publications including Self Taught, Outsider, and Folk Art: A Guide to American Artists, Locations, and Resources by Betty-Carol Sellen and Cynthia J. Johnanson and Permission to Paint Please: A 150 Year History of African American Artists in Wisconsin by Evelyn Patricia Terry. Wells’s work is exhibited in Europe and throughout the United States in folk art and outsider art galleries.

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