Joshua Hagler

Joshua Hagler (1979, Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, United States) lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico, where he moved in 2018 as a grant recipient of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. He graduated from the University of Arizona in Tucson with a degree in visual communications. Self-directed research and travel inspire the artist career determining how he integrates creative influences with life experience. He explores subjects including his middle American upbringing, the 19th-century exploration of North America, modern science fiction, and the traditions of Italian religious art.  Hagler confronts ideas of extreme religious experience and notions of wider cultural and social identities. He conceives large-format canvases with scenes often distorted by gestural smears of fluid brushwork that enter into realms of abstraction. His paintings, sculptures, videos, and animations have been exhibited internationally: “The Living Circle Us”, curated by David Anfam, Unit London, London, 2021; “Drawing in the Dark”, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas, 2021; “Love Letters to the Poorly Regarded”, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, 2018; “The River Lethe”, Brand Library & Art Center, Los Angeles, 2018, “With Liberty and Justice for Some”, Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York, 2018; “Dreams and Fevers”, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2018, among others. In 2021, he released his first monograph entitled “This is the Picture”. Furthermore, he is also an author of poems and essays.