About

JOSHUA FLINT

Biography:

Joshua found his way to the arts via the sciences, having studied forestry and wildlife ecology, before starting over at art school. He found that the sciences didn’t engage with the questions he had about identity, memory, history, and the fractured role the natural world plays in his life. It is often these questions, conjured in oil paint, that have led him to more understanding while opening up new sets of questions that spur his practice forward. His paintings embrace literature, poetry, philosophy, science, and nature writing.

Joshua has held a solo exhibition at a regional art museum, the Sumter Gallery of Art. His work has been placed in the city collection of Astoria, OR.  His “memoryscapes” can be found in Coléccion Solo in Madrid, Spain, the Hinson Art Museum at Wingate University, and in private collections in the US and Europe. He is an associate professor at Pacific Northwest College of Art.


Artist Statement:

My work is based on images curated from many sources such as digitized museum archives, vintage shops, and social media platforms. The paintings fluctuate between the familiar and the unknown while simultaneously including the past and present. By rearranging the hierarchy of elements the paintings become fictions that allow countless interpretations. Layered into works are references to liminality, ecological issues, neuroscience, psychological states, and the history of painting, among others.

The images sourced from out-of-date materials hold a special fascination. Much like observing the ruins of an old, grand building or a church in a state of decay, the characters and objects that populate his paintings are employed to create a sense of ephemerality, imbuing the work with a kind of fascination and disquiet, over the passage of time. Used in this way they serve as reminders that cutting edge trends and novelty will evolve into new iterations or be abandoned altogether. Using these sources for my paintings allows a certain distance to reinterpret as I see fit. I can see this person or place in a photograph but know nothing about what is going on beyond those paper borders. That ambiguity, between the seen and unseen, between the real and the imaginary, is where my paintings live.