Tonight's queer artist feature is Joshua Boelsche
Joshua Boelsche
I'm a gay man living in South Philly and I make abstract oil paintings.
I've been interested in art history and painting for as long as I can remember. As elementary schoolers my mom had me and my siblings take watercolor classes for a few years, and those techniques have always stayed with me.
Over the years I've experimented with other materials and styles, and specifically over the past 2 years I have been developing a non-objective style that utilizes closed shapes to cover the entire picture plane. I draw influence from Joan Miró, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthalen, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Jackson Pollock. I often use geography to title my pieces, especially enclaves, exclaves, eroded land masses or other "unusual" geographic phenomena.
When viewers engage with my work, I hope they feel the impulse to ask themselves "where am I?" in a very physical sense. I largely see my work as a response to the American tradition of depicting the vast loneliness of the frontier, as articulated by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth (and many others); but instead of encouraging the viewer to feel small and lost, I invite the viewer to feel grounded and whole.
Joshua Boelsche
The Art of Being Queer