Joe Roberts: On Memory, Bliss, Horror, and Isaac Newton’s Color Spells

GGLA: Congratulations on welcoming a second child into the world recently. How has fatherhood influenced your artistic perspectives, and what do you hold most sacred these days?

Joe: Lately, I enjoy being the only one awake in the house late at night or early in the morning and knowing that my kids and Megan are safe asleep and I’m painting. Kevin is usually up tho. He’s my ride or die.

GGLA: Where are you right now in your relationship with the Fine Art World? It seems like you’ve been more active.

Joe: This will be my second show this year. That’s actually a lot for me. Most likely will disappear for a while. I like to keep a healthy distance from it all to be honest. If every day is art day I fucking hate art.

GGLA: Your work has always been well recieved by the counterculture/psychedelic community, why do you think your work intersects with those values, and, was that an intended audience?

Joe: I don’t think the psychedelic community was ever my intended audience. I think I was just traveling in those same mind spaces as them often and just putting it out there and some of that crowd picked up on that but I don’t go to festivals or shit like that. You won’t find me on the playa. I was just sort of documenting my life. A lot of my older work I don’t remember making at all. I was a zombie.

GGLA: This is a wide range of works, that include artifacts and items from your personal experiences, what do you think makes certain memories stick out to you when you decide to create work around it?

Joe: Like a venn diagram. Bliss or horror, and memory is in the middle.

GGLA: Why was it important to you to showcase a wider range of material in this body of work?

Joe: I guess because of how I fit work into life now. it’s more chopped up and start stop. Quick-Ocean is awake. Now Lucky is. Ok- I’m going to draw in a notebook and rock the lil one to sleep in the bouncy thing instead of paint. Stuff like that.

GGLA: As a language, how is color playing a role in this body of work, and how do they all connect through that?

Joe: I was learning about Newton, and he made the color wheel up. And he was also more of a magician than some sort of scientist, and it just sort of made me look at the color wheel and see it as a magic sigil. And we have all been under that spell since he cast it.

GGLA: What can you say about the way that you filter your everyday experiences? What have you learned about filtering and communicating your experiences from people who have told stories about the world before you?

Joe: Your life is like your filter. So if that filter was like made of glass or crystal and you looked through different peoples filters they would all take different beautiful pictures of light. But a lot of times people lie to themselves and forget they are the light. Not the filter. The filters just like your life.

GGLA: What is your relationship like with certain archetypes or figures that you have repeated throughout your work, particularly the ones that have accompanied you in your DMT dreams and adventures?

Joe: That’s a secret but its in plain sight.