Joe Coleman (painter)

Joseph "Joe" Coleman, Jr. (born November 22, 1955) is an American painter, illustrator and performance artist.

He was born in Norwalk, Connecticut to a World War II-veteran father and the daughter of a professional prizefighter.

Coleman is best known for intricately detailed portraits of subjects both famous and infamous: artists, outlaws, serial killers, movies stars, friends, and family. He paints with a single-hair brush and uses a jewelers loupe; much of the detail is not visible to the naked eye. The majority of his portraits portray the central subject in the center of the canvas, lozenges containing biographical scenes and details from the subject's life ring the central image. Humorous imagery is often placed beside scenes of tragic family incidents.

His work draws as much from Coleman's beginnings as a comic book artist as from historical precedents. His paintings are most often compared to those of Hieronymus Bosch, and his work has been exhibited alongside canvases by the Dutch master.

In 2006, Coleman had a retrospective at New York's Jack Tilton Gallery entitled "Joe Coleman: 30 Paintings and a Selection from the Odditorium", curated by Steven Holmes. The following year he had one-man shows at two major European museums, in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo, and "Joe Coleman Internal Digging" at Berlin's K-W Institute. In 2008, New York's Dickinson Gallery exhibited Coleman's work together with "Devotio Moderno: Joe Coleman/Northern Primitives" paintings by Hans Memling and other 15th century early Netherlandish painters.

In June 2014, reproductions of Coleman's work were displayed in Portland, Maine. The paintings were displayed in conjunction with the premiere of 'Serial Killers, Country Music and Pickled Punks', a one-hour docudrama staged play. The works in the exhibition were directly referenced within the play, which focused on his output from the 1990s and early 2000s.

Collectors of Coleman's paintings include Iggy Pop, Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch, Leonardo DiCaprio, D.B. Doghouse, H.R. Giger, and Adam and Flora Hanft

Coleman's work has been featured on the covers of many books including:

...
Wikipedia