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JOEL BIRD ARTIST STATEMENT

Joel Bird, Liverpool born artist, now working out of his Studio in London, England. His work reflects his belief that art is the indestructible link between working creative humans & nature.

'Art includes nature and its laws because we as humans do, and as humans we must strive towards durable values and truth as we have done in our evolution.'

His work is a logical continuation of how he views nature and beauty. His artistic influence is derived from a starting point at the formal elements of Art Nouveau and the work of the members of the Wiener Werkstätte, in that the composition of form suggests movement and life. When painting, he uses a mixture of techniques in one work, oil, tempera, acrylic and watercolour to create his art. His colours are instinctive to us all. When sculpting he uses rock formations as an inspiration; he sites the volcanic rock from the Northern Ireland to the West Coast of Scotland a major influence, in both cases, his references are nature.

’Nature juxtaposes vividly opposed yet complimentary colours, they are natures way of speaking, they warn of poison, they camouflage ,they attract attention, we marvel at the great artisans choices but what we are really seeing is the beauty in the paths of our own evolution. I take time with both my sculptures and my paintings; I want my sculptures to have been ‘eroded’ naturally and my paintings to ‘grow’ in a slow, vegetative manner. In this way time becomes a part of them, like slow grown wood or evolution, they are stronger creative pieces.’

On the other hand Joel Bird does not see nature’s conventional beauty solely from the perspective of its curvaceous flow. What is of equal importance to him is the psychological dimensions that have derived from the harshness of evolution and culminated in a conscious realization of the meaningless condition of humanity. The integration of an ‘Artists Language’, led Joel Bird to another source for inspiration, that which he considers as, ‘original’ art such as Maori, Native American and Inuit.

’Original Art is eternal, the language of our ancestors expresses something that lies deep within our souls, our truest links to nature, a world lost, that we were once a part of, and one that we forget at our peril.’

This ‘language’, comprises of the repetitive use of symbols to represent the ‘eternal’ fears and aspirations of human kind. When understood, these symbols take us to a sometimes complicated metaphoric and poetic world.

‘My art is representational aesthetics. I derive my forms from nature and add the language of humankind. I visualize magnetic fields, knots in wood or water erosion in rock, these lines of flux and flow represent the interaction between what is internal and external as a flow of form that composes a framework which allows stability (reality) to exist. It is an attempt to reconcile our duality as nature has, it also represents how our subconscious relationship with both our recent and evolutionary memories determines how we see the present moment.

The heart of Joel Bird’s work lies perhaps in painting and sculpture but as a keen photographer, a working carpenter and a life long musician who has studied jazz for over twenty years, his art takes on the inevitable influences of a wide skill set. From photographic studies of allotments, chimney’s and marathon runners, to sixteen track panoramic sound compositions. From the design and production of fashion shoots, to the design and construction of eco-buildings, being an artist is as much to do with the physical act of working as it is about thinking.

'My involvement with art extends to all aspects of a piece. I consider the skills of craft and its relationship to the ‘quality’ of art interesting. All humans must work; it is what drives our spirits and all humans have within them a creative nature. Those who choose to follow this nature will find they have a natural talent for concept or for craft, but not always for both, I find the marriage of these often pre-empts a quality and sincerity which I see as true expression, as beauty. It is this art that has the power to strive towards a message of change, towards harmony'