We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joshua Williams. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joshua below.

Joshua, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I had always been drawing since I was a child, but I knew I wanted to pursue an art career seriously when I was about 12. I had moved from one city to another and struggled with the transition. In moving, I found out that I had severe learning disabilities making school environments challenging. Because of this, making visual pictures became my way to communicate and learn. Though I had a deep desire to learn, I found the language of school itself to be challenging. and drawing became a way to cope with that hardship From then on I continued to pursue it. My work started being more illustrative, but gradually became more expressive.
My art practice began to shift around college. Professionally, I began to consistently exhibit my work at galleries even making sales. I really stepped into the business and admin side of being an artist at the time. But I also began to learn how to integrate academic research into my practice from my teachers. I took many classes in history, anthropology, and philosophy. I began to use my art-making as a way to intersect academic ideas and learn with the culture around me. Though there were traces of this earlier in my childhood, it became fully realized when I was in college. I especially found a lot of commonalities with ancient people groups (Ancient near eastern, Egyptian etc.) artifacts with my means for making. The intersection of language with figures became an essential component to my work.

In terms of what I do work wise, on one hand I work for a museum institution. But I am also participating in art residency programs allowing both funding and opportunity for my work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a visual artist specializing in drawing and painting. I would describe my artist approach as mixing the ancient with the contemporary. Essentially, my work takes ancient historical concepts and mixes them with the culture we exist in now. This is done both with the formal and content of my art. My approach uses expressive colors and bold line-work to create exaggerated figures. The actual surfaces of the artifacts are intentionally cut unevenly to signify both ancient artifacts and urban decay. My works are large scale, allowing them to create a stronger visual viewing experience. The subjects of my pieces portray narratives. I mix ancient mythologies and histories from a mix of cultures (particularly Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greca-Roman, West African, Western European, and East Asian.) I also use the visual language of graphic novels and hip-hop culture. The visuals of the figures are a mix of western comics and Japanese anime. But it also has the use of language and bold style of graffiti writing. The intermixing of these ideas are achieved through the characters, who each present varied mixes of all these previously mentioned subjects.

In terms of what I offer to clients with my work, I offer both visual enjoyment and on top of creating a unique aesthetic that people can enjoy just for that I also spark curiosity and intrigue. I hope the viewers of my work ask bigger questions about the historic past with its relation to now. I hope to foster connection to the viewer with others through my practice. I am blessed to been able to exhibit and share my creations with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jdjoshuawilliams.squarespace.com
• Instagram: @jd_joshuawilliams

Image Credits
Joshua Williams