Josephine Haden

Region: South

Starting as a landscape painter, I found myself creating mysterious places that hovered on the edge of reality. Filled with lush vegetation and dense forests, I played with scale and space while relying on a base ground of gestural abstraction. These landscapes evolved, as I began to include figures and create scenes dealing with the contradictions of contemporary life where no one is real.

I call this new series of work "Globalization." These paintings deal with the ambiguities of life today. They may appear to tell a story but there is no shared mythology. Reflecting contemporary values, the people I portray are ambivalent to the environment, engrossed in concepts of privacy, notoriety, globalization, security, sports, and conservation, and obsessed with the dilemma of wanting it all.

Figures have become a core value in my new work. These include images of family, friends, celebrities, people in advertisements, and unknown people I have photographed. I paint them in black and white (gesso) on vividly acrylic colored grand scenes of oceans and landscapes. Engrossed in themselves, the figures play in a world of extremes where you might expect anything to happen.