I've always loved the unlimited possibilities of art and creating physical objects from ideas in my head. I was first attracted to it as a kid because everything else, with a set of steps and predetermined outcome, bored me. I was hyper and always wanted new experiences and excitement. I have an aversion to authority and rules. This caused me to spend my teenage years living on the street and a variety of institutions, the worst of which I was in for 22 months.
I made sculptures from trash and discarded art supplies. Mainly I drew in a sketchbook. It was easily portable and easy to thumb through my ideas quickly. I have always worked on multiple pieces concurrently. Needless to say. most of these I lost. I drew strange figures and psychological self portraits. I spent a lot of time in the library so my exposure to art was through exploration of the aisles full of everything. I also read a lot other than art . Nature, religion, philosophy, mythology, comic books. I'd read anything. A lot was over my head but the visions they imprinted amazed and captured me. Nothing else existed of more importance than the uniqueness that creativity must retain.
The solitude I had, both from hiding as a runaway and the forced solitude in the institutions, allowed me to focus on the one thing that could not be treated as an object. My mind and imagination. It was very helpful artistically but made me pathologically paranoid of people and society.
In my 20s I taught myself to tattoo and paint and drew massive charcoal drawings. Very dark subject matter. I burned everything one day and stopped making art. Being dirt poor and making things that no one was ever going to see but me seemed pointless. I grew cannabis illegally for the next 15 years, amassing an obscene quantity of cash. My lifestyle became over the top with excess, searching for some type of connection or longevity of excitement I thought I could buy my way into. It is after all, the way we are taught that we are meaningful and successful. But I wasn't a success, I was unhappy and hollow.
I let everything fall apart, resetting myself to 0. The entire world was shut off. Sunny beautiful days were the strangest. How can I describe a clear blue sky that is so dark and ugly? And sinister trees that are gorgeous? It's like having many personalities each existing and fully conscious simultaneously but unable to communicate with one another. I wrote notebook after notebook. There were the moments of sublime wonder, higher than I have ever experienced as well, two extremes constantly. I started drawing dark webby drawings, cocoons around my written words, some empty, some bursting, Everything obscured. Colors began to cover the surfaces first with pencils then paint. I dug out all my rolls of canvas and old paints that I still had carried around with me for years gathering dust, some bursting, the linseed oil coagulated.
Color dominated in my paintings, form replaced narrative, It was narrative enough in existing. I stopped searching for meaning and instead just did whatever, almost unconsciously. I wanted to make art that was simply art. It wasn't a representation of an existing thing though it is based on my experience and perceptions of a physical, objective world existence. I found they both existed in the non-objective or the "unidentified objectification". I paint negative space as positive space, light and reflection is a huge influence in my work showing the myriad that can appear with from the perception of the viewer. Reflection of light and edges, where things end something else begins. I work in a manner where I have no subject in mind. I am not trying to imitate aspects of nature I am painting the aspects of my nature internally in a visual and sensory manner. I don't want to lead the viewer into my experience. I want them to draw their own thoughts from their own unique perspective. It couldn't be more sublime or interesting than it is. I have a constant outpouring of ideas, much more than I can accomplish in a lifetime. I write everything down. These include paintings as well 3-dimensional work and interactive environments using weird materials and elaborate techniques that I currently don't have access to.
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Joshua Xolo
7.16.22