Steve Joy   23 september - 13 oktober 2004

Biography

Born in Plymouth, England, 1952.
Art studies in London and Japan.
Currently living between New York, Omaha USA and Oslo.

Steve Joy’s work is represented by galleries and museums in Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Japan, New York and throughout the USA.

Selected recent shows:

2004: Fluxion Gallery Omaha, USA «Samurai paintings»
Gallerie Storrer Zürrich, Switzerland «paperworks»
Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA
2003: AVC Gallery, New York, USA
Gallery Elenor, Oslo
Gallery Gierek, Tulsa, USA
Fluxion Gallery, Omaha, USA
Galerie Storrer, Zürich, Switzerland
2002: Gallery Elenor, Oslo
Galerie Storrer, Switzerland

Artist's Statement

The initial impetus for painting came to me through exposure to the works of Barnett Newman
and Mark Rothko. To this day, I remain commited to the idea of spiritual abstraction and to the development of painting and its history from the 15th Century to today. Influences from the past would include Duccio, Giotto, Velasquez, and Matisse.

I have lived all over the world, including many years in the Far East, and my current works include the somewhat romantic idea that exotic and mysterious places can be contained within painting - giving us all the taste of the unknown without having to make the journey ourselves.

In recent years I have made paintings that I hope contain the spirit of places as diverse as a pirate cemetery in Madagascar, the grand 19th Century hotels and palaces of India and the Far East, a Mayan temple in Southern Yucatan, or the remote deserts of North Africa, to name just a few. The most recent paintings in this exhibition are an ettempt to deal with certain codes of ethics, aesthetics and spirituality that runs throughout the history of humanity. This includes the warrior code of the Samurai, the devotion and loyalty of people such as Saint Francis of Assisi, the great tradition of Russian Orthodox Icon Painting, and finally homage to the sublime, ethereal portraits of Leonardo Da Vinci.