Artist Statement

Joss Cole is a painter interested in the threshold between literature and visual art. His work engages with visual and verbal puns, historical references, landscape and nature to explore the ways in which poetry can be considered a key discourse in painting. He received his MA from Wimbledon College of Art, University Arts London in 2011.

He runs, Cole’s Gallery a small independent art gallery in Leeds Corn Exchange currently moving locations to the shambles in the city of York.

There is a desire to ask questions of the viewer in the paintings, for example, ‘What’s Outside the Window?’ and why is the felt hat ablaze?

This is paired with a meaning linked to the material of the paint. The wish is the loose, flowing, thoughtful, economy of paint made from historical pigments and mediums create meaning. The materiality of the painting is transformative, its object. 

‘Everything is water if you look long enough’ Robert Creeley 

His paintings are a visual and performative representation of the poetry of epiphany, moments of creative inspiration and a mixing of the poetic and artist myth making.

Certain images and lines recur in my mind, charged with emotion more than others. The song of one bird, the leap of one fish, at a particular place and time, the scent of one flower, an old man and women on a mountain path, kids seen through an open window playing basketball or an old man reading a paper, these memories have symbolic meaning but it’s the poetic imagery I look for.

2022 Ferens Open, Ferens Gallery Hull, April

2019 Cole’s Gallery, Leeds.

2018 Western Park, ‘There is Another Sky’ Granary Gallery Oct-Nov 

2016 Open Arts Café, ‘Eureka!’ London, Oct

2015 Bankside Gallery, London, Royal Watercolour Society, March

2015 Northen Young Artist, Unit 9 Huddersfield, April

2014 Beep Art prize, Elysium Gallery, Swansea, Oct-Nov

2014 Teleology, Husk Gallery, Limehouse, London, Nov

2014 Bankside Gallery, London, Royal Watercolour Society, Feb-March

2013 New Lights Art prize: The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, September

The Biscuit Factory, Newcaste, April 2014

2013 Occupy My Time Gallery, Deptford, Love in a Cold Climate Feb-March

2013 LoopArt013 Group Show, Creekside Fep-March

2012 Acme Project Space, What’s Outside the Window, Chadwell Award, Nov

2012 Deptford X, Bringing Home the Art; a collaborative project, July

2012 St. George’s Gallery (St. George Hospital Tooting), Solo Show, London

2011 Wimbledon College of Art : MA Show, September

2011 The Nunnery, Futura Oblique, London

2010 Red Eric Studio, I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom, Leeds

2009 Airspace gallery, The Mulit-story, Stoke-on-Trent,

2009 Loughborough University Fine Art Degree Show, Lough