| Joseph E. Wagner | ||
| Birth Date: 1917 |
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| Death Date: 1999 Artist Gallery |
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| Born in 1917 in Franklin, Pennsylvania, Joseph Wagner grew up in the Alliance, Ohio area. He began drawing as a small child and his interest in art increased throughout his life. After receiving a degree at the Cleveland Art Institute, he worked as a cartoonist and advertising illustrator. Later he taught at Timken High School and Kent State University. Wagner considered himself a teacher who painted, not an artist who taught. He believed teaching was just as creative and satisfying as painting in its own way, and criticized schools for not putting more emphasis on art.
Wagner had an unusual method of producing his works. He would paint while lying on the floor of his studio, where he could manipulate the brushes with his pet dog curled up beside him. His paintings are composed of fields of very pale, thinly applied, close valued colors that seem to melt into each other, sometimes forming ridges or suggestions of organic and geometric shapes. Shifts in value and hue are close to being invisible, but they are structured in such a way that surface is suggested. His main concern lied in wanting the work, whether a painting, sculpture or drawing, to have a fullness to it.
Wagner said, “Subject matter has always been what my life has been. There was period after World War II that I worked mostly with family subject matter, a lot of nostalgic stuff. Then came the conflict in the east and my hatred for that kind of thing brought about several paintings with a war theme.” After the war, he chose quieter topics such as landscapes.
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