STATEMENT
In the same way that poetic language gains meaning through distillation, imagery becomes more potent when extracted from the collective consciousness and re-contextualized. It is in isolation that these iconic and archetypal images become part of the poem, imbued with supplementary meaning. Using this visual language, my recent work investigates the increasing isolation of the individual and the resulting expansion of the personal universe, the internal mythologies of interpreted history and the collective dream-scape.

BIOGRAPHY
In 1973 Joshua Field was born in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. He spent his formative years in St. Petersburg, Florida where he attended the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, a competitive four-year high school for the arts that accepts students through portfolio and on-site skills review . This formed Field’s classical foundation and also introduced him to the the influence of the Proto-Pop period in American Art when abstract expressionism clashed with the found objects and assimilated commercial imagery of the pop movement. (Florida’s gulf coast is a haven for the proto-pop elite, including Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist.)

Field later attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where he earned his BFA. At MICA, he focused on assemblage/collage and poetry, and was mentored by Joe Cardarelli, a renowned beat poet and friend of Alan Ginsberg, Andrei Codrescu, Anselm Hollo and Robert Creeley. Field connected readily with poetry as  alternative narrative structures and an ideal analogue for narrative symbolic imagery. In 1996, Field moved back to the Berkshires where he currently maintains a studio in North Adams, Massachusetts, home to the largest contemporary art museum on the east coast, MassMoCA. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, from Chelsea in New York City to Berlin, Germany.

Field is an emerging artist known for poetically driven narrative paintings that are iconic, psychological and subversive. Arrays of archetypical imagery culled from both the collective consciousness and the realm of the intensely personal portray both sociological issues and mythic individual dramas.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Division of Cultural Affairs, Burlington County New Jersey

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
2008, David McLaughlin, "Inside the Berkshires", Pentacle Press
2008, Georgia Fee, "Interview with Joshua Field", ArtSlant
2007, John E. Mitchell, "Mr. Field's Amazing Cabinet of Wonders", The Transcript


MEMBERSHIPS/ORGANIZATIONS:
Northern Berkshire Center for the Arts - Board of directors
Berkshire Visual Arts

PREVIOUS MEMBERSHIPS:
Contemporary Artists Center - Board of directors
Western Massachusetts Arts Alliance