Piece description from the artist
Humorous and slightly macabre, Josh M. G. Yates’ skull series are Andy Warhol-inspired Pop Art paintings with a bite. The first art historical reference that comes to mind is, of course, Andy Warhol's Skulls series of the 1970s. Yates, however, maintains some stylistic variations that firmly set him apart from his infamous Pop Art predecessor. Yates takes a more figurative approach than Warhol's (who is already quite figurative) and more accurately depicts every fissure and crevice of the skull’s anatomy. Most importantly, however, Yates removes all other visual stimuli besides the head from the composition.
Born in the English Channel Islands, Josh M. G. Yates moved permanently to the east coast, USA, eventually settling in New York City. He holds a BFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.
In his paintings, esoteric phenomena and landscape imagery are rendered as abstracted layers of color. Also incorporated are drawn elements and other mark making. Repeating symbols are suspended, and intricate images often embedded onto the canvas surface.
Josh, in his words, invites a viewer’s interpretation. He places an emphasis on the power of the collective-unconscious and says that his paintings exist in-part to reveal it.
When embraced through a metaphorical lens, Yates’ paintings, in name and content, often reveal a dramatic conjuration; of the esoteric and the more determinate and dramatically rendered compositions. A weaving of free-form, feverish hand-application and the more intricately rendered scatterings of symbolic motifs across the canvas surface, Josh’s paintings renew with prolonged engagement, particularly together, as though compositionally the paintings are unfixed iterations of one another.
His paintings have been collected in the US and abroad.
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