David Rex Joyner Art

https://youtu.be/POFMiT6PsIM?si=3JGna6Ele-vM3fLl

I love this cover of Hall and Oates by Nina Simone. Something bitter sweet about everything that she touched.

Rich Girl Provided to YouTube by Epic/Associated/LegacyRich Girl · Nina SimoneBaltimore℗ 1978 Sony BMG Music EntertainmentReleased on: 1995-07-18Background Vocal: Jos...

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Camino Reflections 3 The morning that I started the camino it was clear and cool as I left Saint-Jean-le-Vieux and walked the 45 minutes or so to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. I entered the Pilgrims' office to fill out the documentation and receive my passport which is the official credentials for pilgrims. There is a place....

I am a visual artist, but many of you may not know that I also place and install art. I work with individuals, galleries, and decorators to find the perfect location and properly affix art to walls. I can help with a color story or furniture placement. My services also include help with staging your home or creating a wall of cherished family photos. Whether you have just moved, added new pieces to a collection, or want to refresh a cluttered space, proper placement can transform a room, home, or office. If you are interest in more information, or you have questions about my availability and travel range, send me a private message. Thanks, DRJ😎✌️❤️

In Finistere, Spain. Known as the end of the world for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. This pic shows gear including shoes and ponchos left behind. It marks an epilogue of sorts, a kind of movable graffiti. When does the journey end, or is it just beginning? de Santiago

Camino Reflections 2 is in my blog at davidrexjoyner.com


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Camino Reflections 2 Leaving Centraal Station in Amsterdam, I took the bullet train to Paris. Unlike the Camino, the landscape rushed by. The train for Baritz and then Staint-Jean-Pied-de-Port left from a different station, so rather than rushing, I decided to take the early train the next morning. The weather was rainy...

Camino Reflections...On April 18th I flew into Amsterdam, and stayed at a cheap hotel in Amstelveen about a half hour from the Centraal Station in Amsterdam train where I would leave for Paris the next morning. The lobby of my hotel was a bar that felt familiar. It seemed like home with low light, dark wood, good food, and cold beer. I walked to a small museum about a kilometer away and enjoyed a beautiful art glass collection and some temporary exhibits that dealt with themes of consumerism and identity. That night, I unpacked and stared at all of my gear. I knew that I had packed too much weight for the Camino. So I sifted through trying to decide what was expendable. I would do this several times during the course of the trip and leave behind or send ahead things that I decided I could live without. What do we really need: comfortable shoes, and dry socks, and not much else. That night in my little room with the bathroom down the hall, I packed and repacked several times trying to trim weight. A theme of the Camino de Santiago is what we carry with us--burdens both physical and also the emotional ones that we need to let go.

Like a shadow, I quietly slipped back into town last week from a 7 week trek across Spain. I was on the Camino de Santiago. Nursing a knee injury before I left, I had to pace myself around 7-8 miles a day. Still, I managed an average of 17,000 steps a day through the natural trails, small towns, and cities that are part of the French Way. I started in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Crossed the foothills of the Pyrenees, along the ancient path to Santiago de Compostela. I also, walked the section along the west coast of Spain from Finisterre to Muxia. I skipped some spots to allow more time in the cities, and because my pace was slow, and to rest my knee. I will be posting some pictures and comments as soon as I can process it all. It is story of contrasts: nostalgia and innovation, nature and technology, beautiful and sublime, solitude and interactions. My goal was to press a reset button and somehow align the body, mind, and spirit. Though I am home now, I feel like I have only just started that journey. As experience shifts into memory, hopefully I can process and share the meaning of this pilgrimage.

This is part of a series of works called waterlines. I used this one as an invitation piece for a show several years ago. The waterline paintings tend to have an allover quality making them spatially flat, though this one has more of a landscape quality with the lighter value on top. It is only 10 x 12.5 ins, but has an expansive quality.

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The Dionysian alums were out in force on Saturday to work on the set for Footloose, which opens April 18th in the Brother Martin High School Auditorium. It is the great joy of my life to see these amazing men and women returning to give their time and talents to the little theatre that could. Love and nostalgia filled the room as we cut, painted, assembled, wired, lit, and vacuumed. We also listened to music, talked, laughed, and reminisced. In 11 days, 40+ Dionysians will once again grace the Brother Martin stage to share their hard work and passion as we close out my 25th season. It's been quite a ride. Thanks to Avery Gerosa, Daniel Erdozain, Emma Lucas, Marin Trepagnier, Chris Alley, Katie Peck, Nicholas Frederick, and Ryan Nocito for a great day and for all the memories. Peace and Love😎✌❤!!! And thanks to Katie for suggesting we take pictures covered in paint, sweat, and sawdust.😂

This painting is called 1526 primordial gray. It is a mixed media painting on canvas. It is one of my all over abstractions where I am considering our macro/micro universe from the quantum to the cosmic.

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The Resurrection by Mathias Grunewald from 1452 is an amazing and fantastical painting from The Isenheim Altarpiece. It is a polyptich with numerous panels that could be arranged in a variety of ways depending on the liturgical year. For those interested, I have included a video that explains it better than I can. https://youtu.be/TuO2PNxGC5s?si=Os8JSYMnFEYzQ_3a

Happy Easter!

For Good Friday I thought I would share one of my favorite crucifixion paintings. It is part of a larger work called the San Zeno Altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna. It was separated with other panels from the pradella (the lower panels) and currently is in The Louvre. I believe there is a copy that fills the void on the altarpiece which I think is in its original chapel. It is tempera on panel and painted in 1459. Though the painting is rather small, Mantegna, who was a master of perspective and detail, packs amazing narrative complexity and crisp visual clarity into the composition. It depicts several events from the passion in one composition. The procession to Golgotha, the weeping women, the casting of bones, and the mourning of John the beloved are happening simultaneously. Also, the the good thief is presented in light while the arrogant thief is draped in shadow. Christ's side has been pierced by the spear bearer looming in the foreground. Also by Mantegna is his strange and graphic painting of the Lamentation. The dead Christ's body is jarring with its severe foreshortening. The distraught mourners weep in the left corner of the claustrophobic composition. Though criticized in his day for his unsettling representation of Jesus. I believe Mantegna forces the viewer to contend with the horror and brutality by placing the wounds unavoidably in the foreground.

For Holy Thursday, I thought that I might post some Last Supper paintings. The First is by Andrea del Castagno. It is a fresco from 1450. It clearly focuses on the betrayal with Judas on the opposite side of the table from the rest of the apostles. There is an almost caricature style to his features which was not uncommon for depictions of Judas at the time. Although it utilizes one point perspective, It is not symmetrical, and has a shallow space. I particularly like the depiction of marble inlay on the back wall. They seem more like glorious abstract paintings. I saw this one not long after it was restored. The da Vinci is almost impossible to really analyze because so much has been said and written about it. To me, what makes it so compelling is the fact that it was a technical failure. He was trying to combine aspects of fresco and oil painting, and it started to degrade almost immediately. Even though it is an echo of its intent, da Vinci has embedded Humanist complexity and religious symbolism that resonates as much now as when it was finished back in 1498. Tintoretto painted his Last Supper in 1594 to replace a painting by Titian that had been destroyed in a fire. I always think about what was surely a masterpiece that is lost to history. The Tintoretto, though, has a dynamic composition typical of Mannerism. It also features the moment in scripture where Jesus says "take this and eat this"(transubstantiation) rather than the "one among you will betray me." The dramatic oblique angle, vibrant colors, and twisting figures of the composition pull the viewer into the compelling narrative. Lastly, I included a painting by Degas from 1873 called the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The subject is secular. The technique is direct and the the color subdued. But, the composition is strikingly similar to the Tintoretto.

This is called 1679 matrix. It is a medium sized mixed media construction consisting of wrapped strips of canvas, paint, ink, wire, and rope on a found picture frame. I started making these wrapped paintings more by accident than anything else as part of an experimental phase in the studio. I was trying to mimic the almost sculptural overlapping lines and marks that I have used in some of my paintings and drawings. It also hearkens back to a large construction/painting that I did for the Columbus show at the CAC back in 1992. It was an 8 x 8 ft paining with a table and box. It was called Saints Fragile and Expiditus, and was suggestive of the Pandora's box of colonialism. I used paint, wire, collage, sheet rock tape, and other materials to create a frenetic and mostly black and white installation. I have difficulty working on that scale in my studio, but this smaller work, to me, recalls the energy of the installation from 1992. I have it in storage, and need to probably clean it to get a good photo, which I don't think I have. I have the box, but I sold the table separately.

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This is what my studio looks like on most days. Paintings, drawings, and constructions in different levels of completion. I have several threads or series that I am pursuing. My wrapped paintings, cigar boxes, abstract impressionism, graffiti, allover patterns, abstract landscapes, portals/windows, and paintings on found objects. Some I finish reasonably fast, while others will take years to incubate.

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1522 prismatic primordial is a 40 x 40 ins painting from my abstract impressionism series. The units of color are small brushstrokes similar to those used by the pointillists, sometimes called Neo or scientific impressionists. Seurat used dots of pure color that mixed optically, where the impressionists generally mixed the contrasting colors. I wanted to consider the idea of a dominant visible color as it related to other colors in the spectrum.

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1683 nite lite is 40 x 40 ins painting from my abstract impressionism series. It utilizes metallic and iridescent pigments to suggest the colors of an illuminated nocturne.

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This Is a 48 x 48 inch painting on canvas from my abstract impressionism series called 1685 pastoral refraction. I have several large paintings where I scaled up the size of the brushstrokes to meet the size of the canvas.

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