ARTIST STATEMENT
The spirit of my art is physicality. From my materials—hand-mixed paints from pigment and hand-stretched canvasses, to my process—letting my hand find its strokes until I have lost myself in the body’s instinct for searching, physicality both generates and characterizes my paintings. Each painting becomes a unique, material reminder of the essence of some concrete moments which I have both fully owned and fully surrendered to.
In every painting, I attempt to erase myself in automatic line-making and spontaneous color theory, so I can come to live for a few moments in that authentic and common self that we all share through our bodies, each formed from common materials and united by ancient descent. I believe that the more specifically and concretely I relate my own moments in geometric simplicity and rhythmic flow, the more universal they can become. In communicating without ascribed meaning, I open the possibility of communing with every viewer in the meanings common to us all—the primordial responses of a shared self.
![josh-painting2 Joshua James](https://joshuajamesartist.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/josh-painting2.jpg)