Joshua Loberg
Painting independently since 2013, Joshua Loberg’s eye-catching poured acrylic and resin work can be found in private collections across the continent.
Born in 1990, Josh was raised on a farm in Northern Alberta, and has lived in Montréal, Edmonton, Toronto, and even for a short time in his car. His curious and soulful spirit has led him to live a life that can seem 10 times someone his age — a trained cook, a luthier’s apprentice, a poet, a café owner, a psychology student, a leather-worker, a harmonica player — Josh throws his whole mind and heart into his work, and sees no distinction between the seemingly disparate parts. To him, it’s all a cumulation of his deep thirst for knowledge, beauty and understanding. And this is what you find when you look at his paintings.
It’s there in the bright pops of colour and light, the sharp lines and dark swirls — abstract and yet able to tell a story. Sure, it may be his story (many of his paintings are an extension of his unpublished novel, God Envy, and carry the spirit and philosophy of his writing) but it becomes your story too. You don’t have to be a harmonica-playing, province-hopping, philosopher painter to feel something beyond the materials on the canvas when you look at one of his paintings.
You’ll always find and feel something new there, depending on the time of day or your state of mind. Photos can’t quite capture the wholeness or depth of what’s before you in person, almost like trying to take a photograph of the moon. It’s a little bit magical, something about his paintings that stirs the adventurous, curious spirit that roams within us all.
— Michelle Parise
