Joe Wardwell American, b. 1972
Works
-
Want Good Time, 2023 -
I am a New Man, 2023
-
Present Company Excepted, 2022
-
Have No Time for Love or Hate, 2022
-
Creature Comforts Makes it Painless, 2021
-
What is Strange Right Now, 2020
-
No Bye No Aloha, 2020
-
Indulge Yourself and Your Feelings, 2020
-
Ready for the World to Take a Good Look, 2020
-
Ship Without a Rudder is Like a Ship Without a Rudder, 2018
-
What is Strange Right Now, 2018
Biography
Boston-based artist Joe Wardwell draws on the rich resources of music, landscape, and American culture in his colorful paintings. Combining layers of painted acrylic images and texts in vivid, chromatic hues, his work highlights counterculture narratives in American cultural memory and their relationship to nationalism, history, identity, and place.
"As I develop the painting, I explore and experiment with different ideas to maximize the possible interpretations within a landscape. At a certain point, I just have to go with it, commit, and paint the text there. A lot of times, I think it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But there’s also a physical relationship to how the text fits within the rectangle. I’ll think, 'Oh, this is perfect,' and I’ll have a lyric ready to go, and then, on the painting, it just doesn’t look right, or feel right, or it’s too many words. Then, I have to change and adapt."
Joe Wardwell lives and works in Jamaica Plain, MA, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). He received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1996 from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA), and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University (Boston, MA) in 1999. In 2017, he completed his first large-scale wall drawing commissioned by MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. He has exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA), with works in each collection. In 2012, Wardwell received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. In addition to numerous group exhibitions, he has had solo exhibitions in New York, New Haven, Boston, and Seattle, which have been reviewed by respected publications including Art Forum, Art in America, the Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, and Boston Magazine.
Exhibitions
