Joe in the studio working on a plate for "Out and Away".
In the fall of 2009 Joe began work on his first print with New West Editions. Currently residing in Boston, Joe was born in the northwest and displays those roots proudly in his paintings and prints. Inspired by Renaissance paintings and those of the 19th century romantic painter Albert Bierstadt, Wardwell’s landscapes are wild and brooding; nature is never static, never placid, and always charged with questions of identity and cultural survival. Joe’s paintings are visual explorations of American identity through its geography and musical iconography; almost all of his landscapes are emblazoned with highly stylized text of rock and roll lyrics, culled from greats such as Neil Young, Def Leppard, and Black Sabbath. The lyrics add a cautionary human presence to landscapes whose resplendent beauty almost pleads for our absence.
“Since 2000, I have been working with bringing the worlds of Rock and Roll and the history of painting together. To me, there just isn’t enough art about rock music, and I am doing my part to bring a little more in the world.”
-Joe Wardwell, 2006
Out and Away, 2011
4 plate color soap ground aquatint, sugarlift aquatint, aquatint, and drypoint
Image Size: 9″x12″
Paper Size: 17″x22″
Printer: Max Portnoy
Publisher: New West Editions
Edition size: 20
$700
In his etching “Out and Away”, Wardwell used soap-ground, a watercolor like medium, to create the image of Mt. Rainier reflected in the cool blue waters of a mountain lake. Typically seen in photographs looming mightily above the Seattle skyline, Joe renders the mountain as a delicate, ghostly figure; the mountain appears weightless, the dripping brushstrokes reducing the majesty of the iconic peak to a more intimate scale. Layered together with Neil Young lyrics hovering like a sunset, the image evokes the artists’ longing for his native landscape and instills in the viewer a quiet sense of foreboding.
“Landscape imagery has so much to do with defining American identity. Even now, images of the unfettered wilderness play such a fundamental role in our identity, like when we see snowcapped mountains in beer commercials or trucks rolling over rugged terrain in auto ads. Combining scenes of American wilderness with the lyrics from a Neil Young song allows me to comment on where we are now, and touch on, where things are going.” -Joe Wardwell, 2010
Joseph Wardwell received his MFA in Painting from Boston University (Boston, MA) in 1999, his BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in 1996. He is currently Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). Joe is represented by Heskin Contemporary (New York, NY) and LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA). He has had solo exhibitions in New York and Boston, and been represented in numerous group shows in museums and galleries around the country. Joe’s work has been published in Art Forum, New American Paintings, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Phoenix. Public collections include the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA.
www.joewardwell.com
Joe in the studio working on a plate for "Out and Away".
In the fall of 2009 Joe began work on his first print with New West Editions. Currently residing in Boston, Joe was born in the northwest and displays those roots proudly in his paintings and prints. Inspired by Renaissance paintings and those of the 19th century romantic painter Albert Bierstadt, Wardwell’s landscapes are wild and brooding; nature is never static, never placid, and always charged with questions of identity and cultural survival. Joe’s paintings are visual explorations of American identity through its geography and musical iconography; almost all of his landscapes are emblazoned with highly stylized text of rock and roll lyrics, culled from greats such as Neil Young, Def Leppard, and Black Sabbath. The lyrics add a cautionary human presence to landscapes whose resplendent beauty almost pleads for our absence.
“Since 2000, I have been working with bringing the worlds of Rock and Roll and the history of painting together. To me, there just isn’t enough art about rock music, and I am doing my part to bring a little more in the world.”
-Joe Wardwell, 2006
Out and Away, 2011
4 plate color soap ground aquatint, sugarlift aquatint, aquatint, and drypoint
Image Size: 9″x12″
Paper Size: 17″x22″
Printer: Max Portnoy
Publisher: New West Editions
Edition size: 20
$700
In his etching “Out and Away”, Wardwell used soap-ground, a watercolor like medium, to create the image of Mt. Rainier reflected in the cool blue waters of a mountain lake. Typically seen in photographs looming mightily above the Seattle skyline, Joe renders the mountain as a delicate, ghostly figure; the mountain appears weightless, the dripping brushstrokes reducing the majesty of the iconic peak to a more intimate scale. Layered together with Neil Young lyrics hovering like a sunset, the image evokes the artists’ longing for his native landscape and instills in the viewer a quiet sense of foreboding.
“Landscape imagery has so much to do with defining American identity. Even now, images of the unfettered wilderness play such a fundamental role in our identity, like when we see snowcapped mountains in beer commercials or trucks rolling over rugged terrain in auto ads. Combining scenes of American wilderness with the lyrics from a Neil Young song allows me to comment on where we are now, and touch on, where things are going.” -Joe Wardwell, 2010
Joseph Wardwell received his MFA in Painting from Boston University (Boston, MA) in 1999, his BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in 1996. He is currently Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). Joe is represented by Heskin Contemporary (New York, NY) and LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA). He has had solo exhibitions in New York and Boston, and been represented in numerous group shows in museums and galleries around the country. Joe’s work has been published in Art Forum, New American Paintings, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Phoenix. Public collections include the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA.
www.joewardwell.com