For Curators
Scale, structure, and recall.
A practice forged in recovery: velocity held by architecture, color carrying narrative weight.
Selected Works
About
Joshua Michael Schwartz (b. 1989, Oklahoma) makes large, rhythmic paintings he describes as psychological hieroglyphics—a painted script of the psyche where gesture becomes both wound and word. Raised amid violence and later nearly undone by alcoholism, he paints to survive: the studio is both lifeline and discipline. Over the past two years he has produced more than sixty large-scale works in which color carries narrative and structure holds velocity.
Based in Boston, Schwartz works in data and studies graduate economics—frameworks that inform the architecture of each surface. He is seven months sober and continues to count; the paintings record that accountability. He lives with his Colombian spouse, a perspective that subtly threads his palette and temperament.
The work stands where impact meets control: urgency resolved into form, memory pressed into paint—psychological hieroglyphics made legible in color and movement.