Joseph Flahiff

b. 1968 Los Angeles, CA
Joseph has been involved in artistic endeavors all his life. In 1995 he began doing lighting design for theatre productions. In 2003 he found that lighting design was taking him away from his family for too much time. So, he broke out some of his old watercolor paints and started to explore with them. He found that painting was much more flexible for a young family. It also provided him with something that lighting design did not, the opportunity to be in complete artistic control. Joseph has been actively painting ever since.

Artist’s Statement

Essential to my process is the continual exploration of new ideas, new media, and new ways of expressing myself, from lighting design to sculpture, from painting to installations. However, it is not the media itself that I am interested in; I am interested in how these different media can be used to express myself in creative and compelling ways.
My work utilizes a vocabulary of suggestive abstraction; subjective color, subjective images, subjective light & shadow, subjective lighting, and subtle cues of intention. I use this simple language to let the viewer participate in the work, entering into relationship by filling in the blanks drawing their own conclusions about the work and their relationship to it.

My most current work is informed by my wide range of emotions relating to raising my daughters in today’s world.