Art
Joel Bird’s work has been shortlisted twice for the John Moore’s Painting prize, past winners include David Hockney, Mary Martin and Peter Doig. Solo shows include galleries in London, Liverpool and Philadelphia. His writing and his carpentry has helped to influence his unique style.
‘I imagine my paintings are a distilled visual poem. I am expressing interconnection & that all things are part of the great eternal process of return. The shapes and lines within my work are an attempt to make stable the various forms that emerge as I work. I am a carpenter, and I imagine them to be like the grain lines within a tree trunk that will adjust to accommodate the intersecting branch in the form of a knot’.
The White Shadow. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
The dead live as whispers in the wind. Darkness and light interchange, they are shadows and ghosts which guide our destiny, but that which is truly ours will always be ours, the soul.
Dream Catcher. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
And if you catch a dream, is the dream no longer free? When the moonlight reaches out over the Black Sea of the soul, better to dream in that shadow than to whither away in the night.
The moon, the soul and the blade of grass. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
Walk a while and let the eternal soul be free. To own anything is to trap it, is to be trapped by it. The daytime moon balances on a blade of grass. The moon, the soul, it’s the same thing.
The rock man & the rock pipit. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
We are all trying our best to be stable. In its quest for equilibrium the universe will destroy itself.
Leap of fate. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
Destiny is not written in the night sky. It is grown inside an honest heart. To wade, souls in the brackish waters of acceptable life is to forfeit peace and steal the lives of others. The salmon defies the river not for glory, but because it follows truth and dies with destiny in its heart.
Night and the Mourning Dove. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas.
The grief that follows loss is not exclusive to death. It accompanies the loss of anything we care about, a way of life, a feeling, a part of ourselves. Sometimes we hold on, sometimes we let go, it’s not always within our control.