Joseph Barron

The world is a freakin mess. As an artist and a citizen its my duty to make work with all the information that I can muster up the energy to digest. I love complexity, politics, and sociology...but honestly its sometimes overwhelming! I love paint.

My subjects are encircled by, the schemes and mischief of the human race and the consequences of these behavioral misdeeds for the race and the planet and beyond. My paintings depict life whether real or imagined, in all its complexity. Its all a part of who we are, who we’ve been and whom we are becoming-good, bad or divine. I have strongly held convictions yet, my hope and belief is that a deflective display of comedy will be ultimately persuasive enough.

My aim is to share a vision of optimism ( More difficult each day ) while also reflecting the gravity of contemporary circumstances. I want to do this with humor, and I always want to do this with critical self scrutiny and I always want to do this with everything that I have in me.

BFA and MFA The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Graduate work at The University of Pennsylvania

AWARDS

Awarded New York City Studio Space Grant for one year by the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation.
Grumbacher Award in Painting in Juror John Caldwell, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Awarded Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant .
First Prize, Florida’s Finest Exhibition, Art Center Sarasota, Juror Christopher Jones, Curator of Photography and New Media, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota