STATEMENT

In the same way that poetic language gains meaning through distillation, imagery also becomes more potent when extracted from the collective consciousness and re-contextualized. It is in isolation that these iconic and archetypal images become part of the poem, imbued with supplementary meaning. Using this visual language, my recent work investigates the increasing isolation of the individual in society and the resulting expansion of the personal universe that one creates through amassed imagery.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Field grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida where he attended Pinellas County Center for the Arts, a high school for the arts (Pinellas County Center for the Arts). Upon admission, he entered an intensely creative environment, an experience that formed his classical foundation. He was influenced by what is often called the proto-pop movement, a time when abstract expressionism clashed with the introduction of the ready-made, found object and assimilated commercial imagery of the pop movement. Florida’s gulf coast is a haven for the proto-pop elite, including Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist. Field then attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where he expanded his education. At MICA, he focused on assemblage/collage and poetry, and was mentored by Joe Cardarelli, a renowned beat poet and friend of Alan Ginsberg, Andrei Codrescu, Anselm Hollo and Robert Creeley. Field connected readily with poetry as the assembly of text to create alternative narrative structures is an ideal analogue for narrative symbolic imagery. After graduating a semester early in 1996, Joshua moved to the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, which was quickly becoming a Mecca for the visual arts. He established a studio in the the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, where the largest contemporary art museum on the east coast, MassMoCA, had just opened. There, he began a long involvement with the Contemporary Artists Center which began as a studio residency. He is known for poetically driven narrative paintings that are at once iconic, psychological and subversive. Arrays of archetypical imagery culled from both the collective consciousness and the realm of the intensely personal suggest both sociological issues and mythic individual dramas. Field has exhibited nationally and internationally and is currently represented by Kolok Gallery. He currently lives and works in North Adams, Massachusetts and holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland and a degree from the Pinellas County Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida.