JOSEPH Q. DAILY

American, b. 1981

Joseph has been making pictures for as long as he can remember. The son of two illustrators, he began his formal art training in high school and continued his education at the School of Visual Arts, NYC, where he was awarded a four-year scholarship. Joseph's time at college deepened his love for depicting faces, and he began working professionally as a portrait painter immediately upon graduating. Two years later, he won both Best of Show and the People’s Choice Award at the Portrait Society of America’s prestigious International Portrait Competition. Since then, Joseph has painted over a hundred commissioned portraits, and his work hangs in collections across America and the U.K. Whenever he can, Joseph enjoys seeking out paintable subjects in the gardens, fields, and woods surrounding his Vestal home.

View artist CV here

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Artist’s Statement

For the past twelve years, I have earned my living painting portraits on commission. Though I love painting people, my portrait practice demands long hours in the studio, isolated from the natural world, using photography as my primary reference. What a breath of fresh air, then, to step outside into a garden in full bloom!

This show collects a year’s worth of seasonal explorations and reflections; as a bouquet in deep winter awakened the longing for spring; as the earth thawed to allow waves of flowers to burst into bloom; as lilies and roses adorned the Hall; as an abundance of vegetables ripened for harvest; as white roses closed the cycle of the old year; and as red roses rang in the new.

Nature’s gifts have been an ever-present inspiration and cause for gratitude, and I hope that these paintings may also awaken such perceptions in the viewer. While preparing them for exhibition, I was reminded of a passage from my favorite book:

“There is no getting round the Laws of Nature, no man can defy them. God is the Power that activates the Natural Laws; the Power that nobody has yet grasped or seen, but whose effects every one, daily, hourly, indeed in every fraction of a second, must see, intuitively sense and observe, if only he wants to do so – in himself, in every animal, every tree, every flower, in every fibre of a leaf swelling and bursting its sheath to come to the light.”

– Abd-ru-shin, In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message