On the Locality of Being
I paint outside, in the beauty and chaos of a dis-ordered landscape. I respond to objects in a place and time- the color, light and form of particular localities. I work outside to have presence in the parish, the land, among people, with God. My work is an attempt to have a relationship with real things and not just an idea of things.
Each work is small, I invest no more than a day’s hour into each piece- they are temporal sketches, visual artifacts of a sojourn. Traveling with my painting box into the ordinary spaces of life I paint the hours as prayer, to find the poetry in the mundane. Every locale, whether a suburban cul-de-sac, open field, or coffee house, tells the story of a particular moment and an opportunity to pay attention. My attempt is to inhabit the space between the concrete and abstract.
A small child riding a bike, neighbors walking their dogs, and engaging in frivolous sidewalk conversation become sacred events not because they are trying to be something but because they are something. In these somethings, I hope to excavate beauty through the locality, transcendence in the particular, and find joy in the carnate of life. The work is not intended to be passively gazed upon but rather to foster participation in and between the moment rendered and the percipient, as an alluding symbol of transcendence.
Joey Tomassoni is a husband, father, painter, and pastor residing in Annapolis, MD. His work includes national and international collaborative projects exploring the intersection between faith, beauty and life. His work has been shown internationally and published in the Washington Post, USA Today and other online and local media outlets. Joey shows his work in galleries and alternative spaces around the United States and consults with organizations and churches to cultivate beauty within their ecosystems. Joey holds a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) from American University and a Masters in Applied Theology (MTh) from the University of Oxford with a focus on Theological Beauty.