Watermelon, 2023

Joseph Adolphe  

Joseph Adolphe is a Canadian-US. artist born in 1968 who lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. After receiving his MFA in New York City Joseph continued to live in the United States. His paintings have been featured in numerous exhibitions both within the U.S. and abroad. Within his body of work, there is a rich diversity of subjects all of which speak to an underlying conviction that the world our senses perceive reflect deeper metaphysical connections to the world within us. His paintings share an underlying interest in the universal yet also reflect an intimate autobiographical context that seeks to come to terms with those forces that shape his life. 

As much as Joseph strives to capture the physical essence of a created things, he also tries to give form to the forces that shape the created thing. Joseph is also a Professor in the Department of Art and Design at St. John’s university in New York city where he teaches drawing and painting. His work is about two notions competing for attention. One is based on an idealism; he has about the way he wishes things were. The other is based on what the artist need to do to maintain that idealism. The paintings of messages floating in a sky over a landscape began really with a simple image he had in my mind. The artist didn’t know what these paintings were about in the beginning; he was just captivated by the image. As those paintings developed, they became for him something so personal that Joseph began to see them as gifts—messages--epiphanies that communicated an overwhelming sense of peace and encouragement, the contentment. 

They made him become more and more aware of the importance of dreaming, not in terms of escaping but in terms of living a fulfilling and rewarding life. They enkindled in him a deepening desire to be a good father, husband, teacher, and friend. They made him think that wonderful things are not only possible, but also inevitable and within my reach. They still do although it has become evident to him that to maintain those optimistic feelings a no small measure of persistence is required. Much like trying to keep a balloon afloat by continuous puffs of air. Anything of his work that has to do with still life carries with it something of this narrative, which brings him to the other facet of his work. 

Images of either animals or people who engage in any form of combat represent for Joseph the other aspect of his work. The subjects are never painted while they are engaged in whatever contest is particular to them, rather they are in a state of anticipation of the contest at hand. Although it might be clearer what the ensuing contest might be; the boxer waiting for a match, the bull waiting for the ring etc., they often present an ideal specimen in top form ready to engage with all adversaries, both real and imaginary. The reality for these subjects is that in the end they will fall. They will all die. But perhaps falling in the ring is only a very small part of a larger narrative that speaks to something wonderful that exists, and even waits for us beyond our physical universe, which brings Joseph consequently back to the previous body of work…