Born in Gosport, 1981, Joseph Loughborough spent much of his childhood 'exploring the derelict boatyards and creeks of Portsmouth', experiences that seem to have surfaced in several drawings and paintings featuring boats, and also in a pervasive sense of wreckage. Having graduated from Portsmouth University, he devoted himself to art while maintaining interests in literature, 'philosophy and skateboarding culture'. His extensive CV includes solo and group exhibitions in the USA and Europe, in particular Berlin and Paris where he lived for nearly a decade, and London where he currently lives.
Following in the line of such artists as Mattheus Grünewald, Egon Schiele and Francis Bacon, his subject is the human figure, alone or in groups. Set in a variety of contexts and situations, virtually all the figures endure states of torment. In Loughborough’s work, this is conveyed less by facial expression than by extreme distortions of the body, by the geometric constriction of backgrounds and by features such as the disturbing jaggedness of clothing. Faces confront us but rarely show emotion. That is for the viewer to provide.
From a distance, Loughborough’s large paintings have the luminous quality and grid-like structure of stained glass, yet on closer inspection, they reveal rich textures emerging from the densely worked layering of oil paint and pastels. They are dazzling. Much the same is true of Loughborough’s black and white charcoal drawings, with or without metal leaf backgrounds. The travails we see in his paintings are expressed here through the intense blacks he achieves with charcoal and through the dynamic, often menacing, effects of erasure. There are inevitable echoes of Frank Auerbach’s heavily re-worked charcoal portraits and of Käthe Kollwitz’s haunting etchings of maternal grief but Loughborough’s commanding draughtsmanship transcends influences and never fails to convince.
The ‘absurdist’ philosophy of Camus and Kierkegaard, among others, has been of particular interest to Loughborough. One can see an obvious influence in his work but one is also aware of the paradox that these images of senseless torment and dereliction manage to radiate such an intense energy and a strange exhilaration.