Judith Joseph

medium: painting

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Autumn 2007 Painting	Winter 2007 Painting	Midsummer Night's Dream 2001 Painting
White Peacock 2006 Painting	In the Forest 2007 Painting	Genocide 2001-03 Painting
Memorial for Jewish Victims of the Holocaust, Lostice, Czech Republic 2005 Painting	Fiddlehead Fern Ketubah 2006 Painting	Redwoods Ketubah 2005 Painting
Angel Wings Ketubah 2006 Painting

Contact information
Artist resides in: Manitowish Waters, WI
Email Address: judithstudio@yahoo.com
Web site: www.judithjosephstudio.com

Artist statement
My work is characterized by brilliant colors and intense detail. My specialties are botanical and figurative imagery, calligraphy, story-telling and symbolism. I work in egg-tempera, a Renaissance painting technique used by such artists as Botticelli; oil and acrylic on canvas; and watercolor.

Art lets me explore and express the things I love: nature, music, literature, history, languages and spirituality. I like to combine ideas and story with beautiful forms, in the hope that my work can be appreciated on an intellectual level as well as a sensual one.

In addition to my paintings, I create Ketubot (illuminated Hebrew marriage contracts). This is a folk-art scribal tradition, and I have made over 400 commissioned works of this type. The Ketubah has had a great influence on my paintings. Each Ketubah I create is a collaborative process with the marrying couple, so I have learned to elicit and hear their input and ideas. This has made me more open to possibilities as an artist. It has also made me keenly aware of the power of art to communicate, express and validate people's life experiences. I try to encrypt my Ketubah imagery with multiple meanings and readings, keeping in mind that, hopefully, people will be looking at it for many years. As they grow old together and develop as people and as a family, I hope they will continue to find new meaning and new beauty in their Ketubah. In the same way, my paintings are loaded with secrets and complexity.

Biography
Judith Joseph is a native of Milwaukee and an alumna of UW-Madison, where she earned a B.S. in art. She lives in Northbrook, Ill., and Manitowish Waters, Wis. She is a two-time recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award (1998 and 2004). She was included in the exhibit and published catalogue for "Wisconsin Artists: A Celebration of Jewish Presence" at the Haggerty Museum of Marquette University.

Judith Joseph's work is in hundreds of public and private collections, including the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Chicago Public Library and the Illinois Arts Council. She exhibits widely and is a member of Gallery 659, cooperative-style gallery in Glencoe, Ill. She is a published illustrator.