INTERVIEW : 2015-04-06 Joseph Arthur interviews on his ‘Alien Flowers’ exhibit at Gallery Go (by Lauren Cullen)

Renowned musician-artist Joseph Arthur’s Alien Flowers exhibition will open at Gallery Go in West Hollywood on Wednesday, April 8, 2015 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. This solo exhibition presents Arthur’s new, colorful and vibrant mixed media works on canvas. Through his expressive, Basquiat-influenced style, Arthur’s Alien Flowers abstractly explores his personal experiences as an artist.

An acclaimed musician, Arthur has released eleven studio albums. He has been a member of two supergroups, which include Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper and Dhani Harrison as well as RNDM with Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament. Signed in the mid-1990s to Peter Gabriel’s label Real World, Arthur often creates his own album art. In 2000, he received a Grammy nomination for designing the Best Recording Package for his album Vacancy.

In this interview discussing the exciting upcoming opening of the Alien Flowers exhibition, Arthur poetically describes his creative expression as a way of life:

L.C. As an expressive artist in multiple media, how do you perceive the connection between your visual art and your music?

J.A. The process of making them - both come from the same place. They are both forms of meditation and both windows into higher consciousness. Music and painting for me are one, or at least opposite sides of the same coin.

L.C. Please describe your inspiration and creative process for the Alien Flowers exhibit.

J.A. The inspiration is the moment we transform from this life into the next. My work focuses on the final moment of this life and attempts to bring in all the color and wonder of that life while breaking into the next.

I'm interested most in how we transform, and how we are blown apart, and put back together. My work focuses on the spirits swarming around us and how they mix with our own. Often when I paint the phrase, there is only one moment comes into my head. And so I think I'm trying to paint life as a single expansive moment where everything is breaking apart or coming together. There is only one moment.

Gallery Go, opened recently by Elaine Trebek-Kares and curated by Jen DiSisto, is located at 947 N. La Cienga Boulevard in West Hollywood. This gallery is in the same space that Jim Morrison and Pamela Curson occupied with “THEMIS” in the late sixties. ‘Alien Flowers’ is timed to coincide with the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, and the exhibit will be on display April 8 through April 26, 2015.