We really love (Joel Douek's) work! It is poweful yet delicate, very well balanced.
- Art Curators of Japan
Artist Statement
Hi I’m Joel
I’m a musician turned composer turned artist and sculptor turned writer turned fully 100% on.
I take my anger out through music and drumming. I put and expose natural beauty in my art. Enjoy!
Because music is transient and ephemeral, and it can handle those emotions easily in its stride. It knows them well.
But art is more static. It’s there in front of you. Fixed in time and space. And that’s good too, to make people feel and see, from the hate to the beauty, of who we are and to reveal constantly the underbelly of our human world.
The wine we drink and the drugs we take heighten, or dampen or anesthetize ourselves from the dangerous circus of lies and posture and deceit and one upping, at everyone’s expense. The lies have to stop. Let’s shine a light on the underbelly of the world, because it is the unvarnished reality of how people live and cope.
For my whole life I thought the madness was on the inside. Inside me. It wasn’t. It was out there in the world and plain to see.
So we artists and speakers from the heart and soul can use all available mediums and must. Because every day a new child is born, every second, everywhere in the world. And we want to guide them and teach them, and make them better than ourselves. They will each experience the world in a whole new way because it IS always a whole new place. Even the cells in our own bodies are regenerating so much that there is nothing left of who we physically were. There is only our consciousness. There is only our love.
I've been an artist of one form or another all my life. I am drawn to weathered wood and metal, exploring their contrast with gold and other metal leaf. I find fascination and beauty in natural processes of aging, the rusting of metals into vibrant colors and the complex textures seen in old, reclaimed woods.
My work explores the innate art in these expressions of natural impermanence, often contrasted with the enduring permanence of gold. I believe that art can speak to the heart and to the senses in ways beyond words. Just as it speaks to me that way.
Sometimes my life feels like a string of transcendental or religious experiences. And everything I have tried to do in my creative work has been to bring others that kind of experience. Whether through music, art, sculpture, multichannel or spatial audio, this feeling underscores everything I have ever done. I have always reached for that and have tried to bring as many people with me, so they too can see what I can see. And if you see more or different, I want to learn from you.
There is no conscious or overt message in what I create. Instead my hope is simply for people to connect with my work directly, to share a fascination in the natural forms, materials and colors, a link from my subconscious to yours, without the need for a reason. I like to think: I am not the artist. Nature is.
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time"
- Thomas Merton