This work represents an artistic interpretation of university life and the social construct surrounding higher education.  It summarizes the perception of one individual visually portraying emotions involved in being torn between life altering choices.  What major do I choose?  Can I make art and pursue music?  Students continuously live with parents’, teachers’, peers’, and others’ ideas and persuasions about what is best for...

“I had seen faces in photographs I might have found beautiful had I known even vaguely in what beauty was supposed to consist. And my father’s face, on his death-bolster, had seemed to hint at some form of aesthetics relevant to man. But the faces of the living, all grimace and flush, can they be described as objects?” – Samuel Beckett,  First Love Can you make yourself happier just by smiling? What if you could get rid of a headache...

To understand is to question. Question all that should be explored. In life there are things that separate and things that connect us.  As I began art I drew mostly from my mathematical influences to help define my work and as I began to see myself as an artist I started exploring other possibilities for my art. This exploration has taken me down a path of discovering who I am as a person and an artist. In my most current body of work I am...

I am interested in disgust and beauty. I wonder if it is possible to elicit both responses from the same painting. I’ve found that when I paint with oil, I can highlight subtleties in color and surface that are beautiful and might go unnoticed. When choosing subjects, I also choose a human emotion. Pig heads embody fear, worms embody lust, and ravens embody the beauty of play. These three paintings are from three separate series. Presenting...

    Joseph Downtown acrylic and fiber 2009       Sunrise Road acrylic and fiber 2009     Bath Plug acrylic and...