A Doorway to Joe: The Art of Joe Coleman

A comprehensive monograph of the artist Joe Coleman, the “walking ghost of old America.”  Possessed by the spirits that haunt a nation, Joe Coleman paints minutely-detailed portraits and tableaus that present a unique and intensely-personal vision of the world, both hellish and humanistic, seeking the universal in the visceral. His canon of subjects, a compendium of the famous and the infamous, the dispossessed, the deviant, the damaged and the damned, includes historical figures, murderers, musicians, heretics, writers, artists, and other unshakeable non-conformists, whom the artist channels through paintings so vivid they seem to bear the spark of life. The meticulously-researched narratives contained in Coleman’s work―which has been shown in museums and galleries worldwide, and exhibited alongside Hieronymous Bosch, Otto Dix, and George Grosz―also serve as an exegesis of the artist’s own psyche and history, confronting trauma and celebrating his circle of intimates and acquaintances