Joshua Ostraff
Drawing/Painting
ostra044@umn.edu
My most recent work is landscape painting that has in it the duality of two places. They Interface significant locations and moments of my far past to specific locations in my more recent past. Landscape painting for me is about my interaction with a particular place. Interrelating with a landscape is not only key to my process but it informs me. It direct and drives form, color, and compositions as significant to the specific location I am working with. I often find or recalculate my ideas and questions as my time in that space develops. What drives my process are questions. The most significant thing art can do in [a given society] is allow people to ask important questions. In a very broad sense art has been a vehicle for artists to ask big questions and make imperative statements. Statements that help us rethink who we are. It is not important to me to be original in my art. What matters is that I am authentic. But what is the authentic me? Landscape painting for me at this time is being used to engage this question that seems to be elusive and change with time.
