ARTIST STATEMENT : JOSHUA FLINT

People are forever fascinating.  I am compelled to paint them.  My pursuits are driven by my curiosities about the world around me; about our nature, about our character, about our ambitions, both individually and collectively. 

The work I do explores people and place.  Sometimes these elements collide, other times they remain solitary; leaving the viewer with a sense of how we see ourselves and how others view us.  Human beings in a myriad of possible lights and angles, whether beautiful, hopeful, downtrodden, defeated, or indifferent.  There are so many moments in our lives that are telescoped into a single pose.  My paintings take that one hour, that one moment, that certain dream you would forget if you didn’t get it down fast enough and give it a face, a home, a story.  The figurative work I do allows both myself and the viewer to stop time for a while and focus on the lifetime of events, in all of our lives, that often remain undocumented.

Painting an environment or exploring a figure gives me insight I wouldn’t receive in any other way.  It allows me to have multiple dialogues at the same time.  One with the subject matter, one with the paint, and one with myself.  Culminating a new perspective about all three.