Featured Visual Artist

How did you get started as a visual artist?

I started drawing when I was a little kid and kept at it all through grade school. I remember winning a drawing prize when I was in the 6 th grade. When I started college there was no art program at the school I attended so I majored in psychology (a second love). Graduated with a BA in psychology and sat out a few years before returning to the university and completing a visual arts degree. During the years before I returned to college I continued to paint on my own.

What are your favorite mediums to work in as an artist?

I finished my MFA with an emphasis in drawing and painting. I particularly like oil painting as a medium because of its brilliance and flexibility and watercolor for its immediacy. I also quite like drawing in color pencil for its’ facility in rendering detail and the endless variety of color combinations it offers.

We noticed some of your paintings feature recurring imagery, such as a specific model, a Chevy truck, a broccoli spear, and so forth. Can you talk a bit about how you work through different iterations of paintings using similar imagery as a visual artist?

The imagery I use in my work has undergone a variety of iterations over the years. When I was in graduate school, I worked in the art department gallery and had contact with all sorts of packing material (opening and repacking artwork for various exhibitions). I started using elements of these materials as props often combining them with traditional still life material, such as fruits and vegetables. The paper packing and cardboard could be altered to appear as walls with doors and windows, much like stage flats. Gradually they evolved as combination landscape and still life compositions.

We noticed that many of your images are playful or involve an element of surprise in terms of the objects depicted or the composition of those objects. Could you talk about how you see surprise or novelty factoring into your work?

A great deal of my work is influenced by the surrealist movement and one of the tenets of that movement was the juxtaposition of unrelated subject matter creating odd and sometimes dreamlike connections and visual states. The unusual combinations would often create whimsical scenarios, a sense of tension or dread and the suggestion of narratives which only existed in a peripheral way in the compositions. About 15 years ago I began using the female model in my work. Some of these works were juxtapositions of traditional feminine maternal imagery (dolls) with the edgy inclusion of sharp instruments as potential weapons.

Also, in some works, I use well known, art historically significant paintings as inspirational “take-off points.”

In the past few years, I have returned to works inspired by the sci-fi pulp illustrations of the 1940s and 1950s. ... So, I work in a  umber of different directions, but, generally, my work tends toward “traditional representational imagery.”

What advice do you have for aspiring visual artists?

Have a love for what you are doing. Don’t let anyone try to convince you that art is rivolous and insignificant. Follow your dreams, try different things, experiment, don’t be afraid of failure, don’t worry about perfection, there’s no such thing.

*** Do something or make something every day if you can!

Joel Soiseth, originally of Williston N.D., has been multi media artist and art professor at Montana State University-Northern since 1988. Soiseth graduated from the University of North Dakota with a Master of Fine Art with an emphasis in painting and drawing. He lived in Grand Forks, N.D., for several years while he taught art at Mayville State College. He also worked for commercial design studios doing illustrational art and for a professional photographic studio. He is now concentrating on traditional oil painting of the human form.