ART & IMAGE: INTERVIEW
Breaking Open The Head: Haley Josephs
Phenomenology, Deeper Realities And The Beauty of The Moment
The incandescent and oversized canvases of American artist Haley Josephs enact an overpowering drama of light and presence that obliges the viewer into an act of intensive participation. As such, what might appear at first as a spectacle of luminous colour becomes, with time, a record of the attention one has given in response – an attestation that the world can be met with explosive receptivity. Her work brilliantly moves through sensations that are both private and universal. There are paintings, for example, that evoke the immediate astonishment of a child feeling sunlight on the cheek – not as an illustration of memory, but rather the transfiguration of a single, simple awareness into an image that holds its brightness like a bell. While others present the slow, almost brutal clarity of a traveler who, alone in a field, experiences what might be called a violent unveiling of a deeper reality; a shuddering, ecstatic comprehension of nowness.
Her paintings then enact the conditions under which something is disclosed as phenomenological revelation, functioning as instruments of radical awareness – asking the viewer to submit to bold conditions of light and colour in order to ‘ be here now’ and taste the absolute present. To stand with her huge paintings is then to be drawn into a field where the spectre of childhood, the sense of another plane of spirit, and the patience of craft have combined in an experience in which one might relearn what it means to be truly awake. In this rare conversation with FUTURISTIC DRAGON the artist speaks of mysticism as fidelity to the intensity of sensory life, and tells us why she seeks to celebrate the beauty of existence, while simultaneously honouring the inevitability of death.
What drew you to art as a form of expression as a child?
I have very early memories of how certain colours gave me a sort of sensory experience. I would draw all the time with crayons, and try to make combinations by putting colours on top of other colours, and I would get this feeling in my body that I felt I needed to chase, almost like an addiction – so, from an early age there was this strong attraction to to colour. But wanting to express myself came much later, when I was a teenager. It was when I went to art school that I started trying to figure out what I specifically wanted to focus on. I really started mining my family histories, and the depths of unspoken stories from my childhood, because when I was growing up, there was a lot of tragedy and violent death in my family on both sides.
“When I think back on my childhood, I was sort of in this dark place with these dark stories, and I felt like everything was in a fog”
It sounds like art was a kind of journey into an inner landscape …
I grew up with these stories of death and loss from a young age, because my sister died tragically right before I was born, and my aunt went missing. So, they were these unsolved mysteries, and I grew up with this very strong image of this woman walking off into the Montana wilderness in my head, never to be found. I was just reflecting the other day on the characters in my paintings, and I realised they've always been sort of the same. I started making paintings of this woman and my sister when I was in college, and I can still see them both in this work. I've always been painting those characters. These two people have become archetypes in my work, but also in my life. I think I have always wanted to celebrate their lives through paint.
So your late sister was always with you as a ghost sibling, in a sense?
I think that is exactly the feeling. I've always felt a strong connection to her, even though she isn't there. Also, even though she's my older sister, she's permanently young in my mind because she died young – so, in a sense, she's also like a younger sister; this little girl. It was not something I talked about, or could articulate in my work for many years. But I realise now that there was always this character that I felt was a bridge between this ethereal world and me. I've always felt that sense of a bridge between us – it’s like, I'm the one that's holding it down in the reality world, and then she's on this other side. Also, I grew up in Pittsburgh, where it's super cloudy and overcast, so, when I think back on my childhood, I was sort of in this dark place with these dark stories, and I felt like everything was in a fog. I was drawn to colour, and wanted to reveal what was out beyond the fog. I mean, looking back, I can say that now. I didn't really know at the time.
Your work seems to be about the different stages of life’s journey …
Yeah. And it has to do with kind of celebrating the journey itself. There is no destination, but there is often a path in the work that symbolises the perpetual journey. So, with a lot of the characters, even if it looks like they're settled, there's always going to be this horizon, and there's moments of vastness shown through images of the sky and mountains, and I think that is an important reminder of our littleness in the world – a sense of the micro and the macro, and the importance of small, intimate moments within a whole cosmos that is so much bigger. I think a lot of my work has to do with a celebration of life, but with an honouring of that vastness, and respect of death and afterlife. I think that death and birth are so close together, because I feel a strong sense of this other side that sometimes comes into this reality – in a way, my work is about celebrating life, and honouring whatever comes.
Where do the images you employ to represent these ideas come from?
My work comes purely from imagination, and the best time for the visions to come to me is when I'm hiking. Being around nature is just really important for me, because, ever since I was little, being in nature, or near water, calms me. It always has. And I just feel like you can learn from nature. If I'm not in a forest, or if I'm not near the ocean or near mountains, I can at least look up the sky, and I feel like you can learn a lot from just looking at a cloud formation, from star gazing or looking at sunset or sunrise. If you have this moment of waking up, and seeing that you're actually in this beautiful place that's real in the moment, then that is more beautiful than the dream of reality in our minds. We're kind of always somewhere else, you know? We're always thinking about the past, or thinking about what's going to come in the future, and that's sort of living in a dream. But when you're truly in reality, you're awakened to this moment of true beauty.
“My work is really just driven by that fact that I love that energy I feel when making the paintings – that journey is so, so important to me”
Are you depicting that awakening in your painting Head Cracks Open, Let God Come In?
Yeah. It depicts this person who is witnessing the beauty of the surrounding landscape, and they're having this moment of awakening, and their true self is sort of bursting through their head and breaking free of their form body into this ethereal sort of being – one can't literally paint something like that, but that I tried to make a painting of it by representing the bursting of that energy going through the head.
There’s a similar kind of energy to Food Sloshing in Baby’s Mouth / Sunlight Through Window– a sort of explosive awakening …
It’s a really sensory painting. The baby is eating, and it's super excited, and I was just trying to think about how a new body reacts to new sounds and flavours and temperatures in a way that a body like ours really can’t, because we have so much history behind us, and nostalgia. To a baby everything is brand new, and they're feeling things for the first time – how can can we even remember what it's like to experience a carrot for the first time, or whatever, and that first feeling of the sunlight on your skin and, and how that just feels so good.
Do you believe that our core identity is way beyond all of the narratives we build up about ourselves?
Definitely. Our form bodies all have a lot of stories, and they have birthdays and astrological signs and, you know, sexual preferences, and certain things that they like and don't like. But at the core of who we are is sort of just a ball of light, and this energy that is untouched by all of that. When I make a painting I feel the energy of being on kind of a journey, and then at the very end, it's sort of, like, oh, cool, I made that. I am not really at all attached to my paintings when they are finished. My work is really just driven by that fact that I love that energy I feel when making the paintings – that journey is so, so important to me. It's kind of a feeling that I'm hoping to share when people experience them. I would love for people to experience them like a warm hug – or feel that they are being encompassed by beauty, or a sense of vastness.
Introduction & Interview by John-Paul Pryor
Find out more about the artist here.
Image Credits: Food Sloshing In Baby’s Mouth / Sunlight Through Window, 2022, oil on linen. Golden Valley, 2022, oil on linen. Summer Rain Shower Enter Rainbow Light, 2022, oil on linen. Head Cracks Open, Let God Come In, 2022, oil on linen. All images courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech.
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