Stand Your Ground Painting

Joe Waks is a painter and printmaker who resides in beautiful Bayonne, New Jersey. He is also an attorney who for 18 years worked at the highest levels of local, state and federal government in his beloved Garden State. Waks is an audacious commentator on the kooky times in which we live. Observant as a seasoned reporter who never leaves home without his “Little Pad of Ideas,” he doesn’t let a headline, artifact or late-night infomercial get by him. Waks is constantly unearthing the teeny-tiny things that go unnoticed in our mundane workaday world. Waks’ mixed media creations serve as a commentary on the interconnected world we inhabit. Underscoring his passion for politics and popular culture, his work reflects our universal ethos of consumption by “recontextualizing” the icons and emblems common amongst disparate human civilizations. He seeks to temper contemporary reality with a heapin’ helpin’ of humor, a super-sized serving of irony and a couple of squirts of hope. Although acquisition and the ubiquity of consumer culture are at the heart of Waks’ works, there is a pervasive ambivalence that lies within. Joe Waks is currently a printmaking resident at the Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was a 2012 Fellow at the Printmaking Center of New Jersey in Branchburg and a 2008 New Jersey Print and Paper Fellow at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Waks has had numerous solo and group shows at galleries in New Jersey, New York, Miami and Philadelphia, including three highly successful solo exhibitions in 2010 and 2011. Waks made his New York City solo debut at R. Jampol Project(s) in May, 2013 and is currently working on a new series of paintings. He recently completed a large scale mural entitled “U-S-A-Rama,” which was commissioned by the City of Jersey City. Waks’ works are in private collections in New York City, Los Angeles and in many others in the United States and Canada. He is also in the permanent collection of the Jersey City Museum, Hudson County Community College and Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide, part of one of the world’s largest public relations agencies, acquired nine of his paintings for its renowned collection.