Australian-based contemporary artist Joshua Miels is a palette knife oil painter who captures the emotions of human beings through a series of colorful, multi-layered, large-scale portraits. Spending countless hours adding layer upon layer of paint, Joshua produces powerful paintings that resonate with viewers long after their gaze has left the canvas.
Painted mainly using oil, each and every piece of art takes its own journey through a process of experimentation. The first time he picked a brush to paint portraits was in high school. It may have not been the greatest painting, but it created a hunger inside him to get better. Painting was an opportunity for him to escape the world around him and get lost in the creative challenges that every brushstroke presents.
Studying visual communications in university, he worked as a graphic designer initially. He then decided to try his hand at watercolor and as his confidence grew, turned to large-scale oil paintings. Drawing inspiration from many great artists replicating their styles to unlock their secrets, he learned something from every artist. He used those lessons to create a style of art that was unique to him.
Experimenting for him delivers a great sense of excitement. Even if the piece doesn’t work out, he may be disappointed, yet he is happy to learn from those mistakes. He uses those learnings as the springboards for his next ideas.
Joshua’s driving force is his passion to create. Through his work, he is looking to remove the stigma of mental health in males. Due to a family history of mental health and addiction, art for him is a way of dealing and understanding. At first glance, Joshua’s artworks are dynamic and powerful. However, once we observe the paint, the cracks in its surface, the way it breaks away from the contour of the face into a multitude of lines and strokes, our perception of them changes. We start to understand that the face is often a façade, masking what we all experience as humans – times of fragility, vulnerability, and powerlessness.
His artworks address the disconnect between the exterior personality people present and their interior worlds. “I try to translate what people feel into my pieces and that is one of the reasons I like to keep the face expressions out of it,” he says. “Just because someone is happy and smiling doesn’t mean everything is ok. His artworks challenge the viewer and prompt them to draw upon their own emotive experiences.
-feature@magzoid.com
