Biography and Artist's Statement

Biography

Royden Josephson was born in rural Manitoba in 1945.  He studied at the University of Manitoba School of Art (BFA 1969) where he was awarded a campus commission for a sculpture, completed in 1970.

In 2003, after a career in art education, he retired from formal teaching to devote full time to the pursuit of his own artisitic interests, beginning with a six month period of study in drawing, painting, and sculpture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.  He recently moved to Victoria BC from  Ashcroft, where he maintained his studio practice for eighteen years. 

Artist's Statement

Personal practice in the field of visual art is an evolutionary process that requires openness, change, flexiblity and experimentation.  It also requires discipline and dedication to the pursuit of aesthetic values, which for me means a continuous practice of drawing from life.  I find in the natural world (flora, fauna, and figure) the structure that is the underpinning of visual art.  I am also intrigued by the relationship between nature, art and mathematical principles such as Fibonacci sequences.  My painting process is one of changing and rearranging formal elements pursuing an often elusive level of satisfaction.  There is no formula for arriving at an outcome. Although there is a similarity in the approach, each new painting is a separate experience. "Each canvas has its own way of evolving...each beginning suggests something - the suggestion then becomes a phantom that must be caught and made real." (William Baziotes, 1912-1963). I try to avoid the narrative, but rather supply a conduit for viewers to engage their own experience.