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Artists
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Sculptures
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Jerry Joslin
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Biography |
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“Art is personal,” reflects sculptor Jerry Joslin. “It should be something that speaks to your soul. It should move you personally. I try to please myself,” he adds “to make things I like and (then) I find there are a lot of other people who share that feeling with me” What Joslin likes is adventure – heroic adventure. Like the Argonaut Jason, he invites us to sail with him on a mythic voyage of discovery. Through the intensity of enchanted figures – reaching, stretching, striving, yearning toward the ineffable – he urges us to complete their motion; to lean with mind, heart and imagination beyond the visible, to thrill to the miraculous hidden within the simple and natural, to take up life's exciting quest. The persuasive power of Joslin's bronze metaphors spring from his romantic spirit and personal acquaintance with adventure. In 1970 he set out with his wife and two-year old son in a 43 ft. ketch on a three year voyage through the Caribbean, Latin America, the Galapagos, the South Pacific, Mexico and Hawaii. Later, after settling in Oregon, he became a firefighter – a career that continued to satisfy his romantic notions and relish for calculated risk-taking while providing needed stability for pursuing his art. The dynamic tension between inner vision and reality that pervades his life pervades his art as well. In “Steelhead Stretch”, three figures strain to land a steelhead – pole, gaff, bodies maximally extended, grappling with the fish, arched in death-defying opposition. Angular negative spaces jab into the curves of the struggling forms to underscore the force of their exertion. A mass of jagged rock forms the fulcrum upon which the scene is enacted. “I prefer using anatomical extremes to create an `over the edge' reality;” he explains. “There is greater visual impact, drama, energy and vitality created this way.” Nevertheless, his compositions maintain a carefully crafted balance and exude a poetic harmony that uplifts the spirit. The lure of the sea and water, the freshness of a child's wonder, and the nurturing of the spirit are common themes of his work, intimating that imagination is the alchemy that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. In “Age of Wonder”, mother and child gaze rapturously into the distance. What is it that animates their faces? They lean forward; the mother encourages the child to reach out. Only the spiraled shell in her palm suggests the source of the vision – the sea, life itself, the deep waters of the subconscious, birthplace of all adventure. Mr. Joslin is a self-taught artist, who, with characteristic independence and dedication, made an intensive study of European sculpture during extended trips to the continent in the mid-1980's. His works have been exhibited widely in western United States as well as Florida and New York. He has previously held solo shows at the New York and Los Angeles Art Expos. |
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Paul Joseph Gallery - 1-800-233-4278 |
