New art: Joel Pedersen

I came across the work of Joel Pedersen when he posted about it on Mastodon. I went to his website, xxyxxy.com, and was immediately taken by his evocative paintings. I bought one (see below) and reached out to Joel to see if he’d be interested in submitting to an interview for here. He readily agreed, so I sent him some questions to answer. After a couple of days without power (and then a couple to catch up on things), he replied with the following.

Joel Pedersen, tell us about yourself.

I am a 52-year-old flounder-er living in a tiny desert town with my wife — who is also an artist — two cats, and a pug named Olive. I am at an age where I feel like I have lived a handful of lifetimes, and I perhaps have one or two left. When I was younger I worked in colorization, animation, and pre-digital photographics; when I was a bit older I returned to school, got a degree in Sociology, and worked as a computer programmer for a number of years; and, though I had always made attempts at creative work during these younger times I was never able to cobble together a practice. For the past decade, however, I have made a more concerted effort to focus on it solely.

What makes you call yourself an artist?

A kind person might say audacity, a mean one might say arrogant cluelessness. As I mentioned, my educational background is in Sociology, but I don’t ‘do’ Sociology, so I do not call myself a Sociologist. What I am doing now is art, and though it’s debatable whether what I produce is good art or bad art, it’s nonetheless the practice in which I am currently involved.

But this is somewhat incomplete: that I call myself an artist because it is my current trade and practice. The fuller answer is that, in my creative work, I attempt to formulate and fulfill an aesthetic; to create things that seek to please, and things that call into question, and things that upset or disturb. I create problems for myself in works that explore defined themes in order to develop a craft, to learn about myself, and to connect with others for whom this work resonates.

How did you become that way?

I’m not entirely sure. I’ve always admired artists and performers who looked at the world differently, or who said or thought of things differently. The people who take an art-form and do something new with it, who send it in a direction that it hadn’t been before. That said, I can’t say that I am particularly taking painting or poetry in a different direction at all. Maybe I will eventually, and maybe I won’t. So what am I doing, and why am I doing it?

Certain themes recurrently pop up in my work. I do not believe in god, nor an afterlife; in ghosts or spirits; in aliens or cryptids. My day-to-day life is not one filled with mystery; it is matter-of-fact, boring, and plods along. In my work, however, I seem to seek an understanding or appreciation of mystery, an exploration of deeper meaning which is absent in the prosaic life I lead. I ruminate on life-shattering things, like loss and death, and I explore notions of unexplained objects, occurrences, entities, or organizations: Weird stuff that strikes me as odd or interesting or terrifying. I’m not sure why, particularly, but it’s something inside that is seeking expression.

Does where you live have any influence on your work?

Absolutely. I have lived in various deserts of the southwest United States for more than half of my life. I think I must need the sunshine and heat for my mental health. That said, I live in a landscape that, for much of the year, would love to kill me. A place where, were it not for these flimsy environmental control systems that keep things habitable, I would be unable to live. I find the harshness, the desolation, the isolation of the place I am now living to be extremely beautiful.

There is also something about the barrenness that evokes in me an almost mystical feeling. There is space here for dreams and imagination to be overlaid on the landscape: A painting, painted on top of another.

Your painting is very evocative. In the piece I bought, Ooidal, the moon rises over a ridge, and when I opened the shipment I was astonished to see what look like two ghostly buttes under the broad brushstrokes of the luminous sky. (If the reader looks carefully in the jpg I stole from your site, they can make out those ghost shapes.) Can you comment on that in particular and the tone of your painting in general?

Many of my paintings cover older paintings underneath. Though this practice began as a practicality, I have continued it. The underlying artifacts and textures of old work recall a history of abortive attempts, stabs in the dark, notions that weren’t ready, and may or may not be still percolating. The two buttes you can detect were, in fact, two buttes of another scene, now gone but still whispering their erstwhile existence.

When I paint a piece, I have gotten into the habit of writing a poem to attend it. Ooidal’s companion poem, a cinquain, alludes to the painting underneath, and reads as follows:

Full moon
just now rising;
the color of an egg.
Soon to reveal our secrets
in pale light.

Otherwise, the piece depicts a desert full-moon-rise: the emptiness and the brilliance, the constantly changing warm light. It is something to see; maybe even the reason for seeing. I always watch with reverence, and every time the quote from Paul Bowles in The Sheltering Sky pops in my head: “...we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

What advice would you give to any artist who is unsure of themselves?

If you paint, you are a painter; sculpt, a sculptor; write, a writer; compose, a composer. The title is meaningless without the practice, and that is a very apt word. No one creates perfect work, probably ever, and if they approach perfection it’s because of a tremendous amount of practice. In every endeavor I have undertaken, I have always looked back on prior work with new insight gained in practice. Honestly, perfection is a poor goal. It is more important to get what is inside of you out. This takes time and patient work, and it doesn’t happen until you start practicing.

The world needs your sincere creative activity, especially now. It is, no matter what, an expression of your humanity, and it ties us together.