Biography

Joseph Bliss is a visual artist and educator from Philadelphia with a MFA from the University of the Arts.

Artist Statement

My recent work is influenced by the capriccio tradition of landscape painting. These reimagined spaces of classical ruin feel so contemplative, that over the years I return to them often

While the style of this example has all the hallmarks of a real place one might visit, it is a fiction. Capriccios are an imagined compression of space and time. I began cutting block of paper and cutting into them arriving at the essential motif of a recession, a curve.

Classical architecture, figures, and flora are freed from the shadows that would traditionally fix their meaning in time and space. Instead, they emerge within bands of sunrise and sunset, where landscape, architecture, and figure share the same language of color, reshaping into ever-changing visual paths. The paintings celebrate the idea that once something has existed, it always exists, and within that persistence, possibilities remain present for interconnection, play, and happiness.

Bliss holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of the Arts and has taught and painted for more than two decades in the greater Philadelphia area.