About Joe Flasch
A prolific artist, Joe Flasch approaches the task of image making much like a Chinese calligrapher would. He has developed a collection of symbols, easily depicted in flowing brushstrokes, which function for him like pictograms. There are brush strokes that symbolize such things as trees and people. When the symbols for people are joined together, they represent families. Many of Flasch’s paintings, though appearing to be wholly abstract to the uninitiated, are actually depictions of such things as a family having a picnic in a park.
When he paints Flasch likes to isolate himself at the back of the studio where he is free to apply his pigments with a certain verve and to get lost in his own world. The grace of his brushstrokes sometimes spills over into his reality, as he paints amid short episodes of twirling dance steps which compliment the looping marks which he is committing to canvas or paper.
Flasch will proceed to repetitively fill his working surface with his brushstrokes/pictograms, switching forms as ideas occur to him, and varying sizes and occasionally colors. He goes on until he is satisfied with the finished effect. Given that his methods remain static, his overall body of work displays an astonishing degree of variety, with each new piece achieving new effects of texture, and relationships of form and color.
