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Joe Coleman (painter)

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Joe Coleman
Joe Coleman

Joe Coleman (born November 22 1955) is an American illustrator and painter.

Biography

He was born Joseph Coleman, Jr. in Norwalk, Connecticut to a World War II-veteran father and the daughter of a professional prizefighter. He was raised Roman Catholic. Despite his mother's excommunication, she regularly took Joe to mass, a major early influence on his work. His first drawings as a child were of bleeding saints, death by fire, and stabbing.

In first grade, Coleman was placed in a class for emotionally disturbed, disabled, and retarded children. At age 10 he received an art award from Lady Bird Johnson for a drawing of garbage. At age 12, he set a fire in his elementary school yard and "confessed" to committing several murders, to a priest at Norwalk's St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Coleman briefly attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1976, but was soon expelled for refusing to paint in the abstract style.

Work

Cover of Coleman's Cosmic Retribution
Cover of Coleman's Cosmic Retribution

Coleman's subjects are pop icons of a sort who are often transgressive, criminal, and "outside" the mainstream radar. In some ways, much of his style makes reference to the Spanish-Mexican religious tradition upon which Frida Kahlo also drew. Coleman's work is sometimes reminiscent of Basil Wolverton's work.

Exhibitions

In 2006, Coleman had a major retrospective at New York's Jack Tilton Gallery entitled "Joe Coleman: 30 Paintings and a Selection from the Odditorium," curated by Steven Holmes. The following year he had one-man shows at two major European museums, in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo, and "Joe Coleman Internal Digging" at Berlin's KW Institut. In 2008, New York's Dickinson Gallery exhibited Coleman's work together with "Devotio Moderno: Joe Coleman/Northern Primitives" paintings by Hans Memling and other 15th century early Netherlandish painters.

Subjects portrayed

Book Covers

Coleman's work has been featured on the covers of many books including:

Pranks

His pranks — including appearing to blow himself up and medieval-style geek antics — have been documented in the Pranks! volume of Re/Search Books, along with the works of some of his contemporaries such as Boyd Rice.

Interests

Coleman is an avid enthusiast for weird, dark American culture and a serious collector of sideshow oddities. He's a patron of Johnny Fox's Freakatorium in New York City (where he lives) and was a supporter and good friend of the late rockabilly eccentric Hasil Adkins. He also acted in Black Hearts Bleed Red, a 1992 film adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, made by New York independent film director Jeri Cain Rossi, and also in Scarlet Diva, Asia Argento's 2003 film debut as director.

References

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