Joseph Arthur’s first passion is the visual arts but he is better known for his musical talents since being discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-nineties. Arthur’s artwork is a spiritual quest put into form with lines and colour. His interrogations, his torments, and his search for beauty are the underlying threads that unite his work. As with Arthur’s music which evokes vivid imagery, his paintings are anthems that unite the rhythm of the forms.

Joseph Arthur’s artwork has received much attention including a Grammy nomination for his album packaging for the 1999 release of Vacancy. Arthur has participated in solo and group exhibitions in North America and Europe. Last year, Joseph Arthur opened an art gallery in Brooklyn, New York -- the MOMAR (Museum of Modern Arthur). A sort of Andy Warhol-esque factory where his artist studio, recording studio, and art gallery coexist and feed off the other.

My art is spiritual nerve.
It always bugs me when people say it looks like hair,
But this is the reason for 'wig'
In the center
Which like all fear,
Brings itself, upon itself,
That which we desire to avoid.
The correlation
Of hair and nerve
One alive
One dead
(Painted white and in the center of the room in a kiddie pool (where life comes to celebrate itself at the apex of youth and innocence))
Nerve
The highest sensation of feeling
The raw
The unspeakably open
Where ecstasy and excruciating pain are one
And hair
The death
The dead thing
The drug history contained therein
Wig
A fake death
A painting
A fake life
Or the representation of something more than life
An exaggerated
Or enhanced version

How do you do that?
People always ask when they see my work
The only answer I give them
Is
Doesn't that very question make it a thing of raging greatness?
They usually laugh or spit at my feet or want to slap me
But it remains true
Because mystery
Especially in this day
Of no mystery
Is of the utmost value

In my paintings
Life
Or even alien life is represented
Sex
And the reaching for the beyond
In the wigs
An answer to my critics
A fake death
Something lower
In a cheap plastic pool
Where poor kids come to play
A middle finger in a room surrounded by ecstasy

Ps

The name
Wig
Yes there are wigs
But the real wig
The nerves open
The junkies fiending at dawn
Or lovers in orgasm
Or the mystic
Closing his eyes
As he looks toward the sun
All of them wigging
Not to mention
The alien visiting
This world and the next

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