Joseph Paquet
Joseph Paquet, while pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York, had the good fortune of finding a mentor in artist John Foote who opened his eyes to the joys of drawing the human figure. After graduating, Paquet met another major influence in his life, John Osborne, who was uniquely gifted in producing convincing landscape paintings from memory. Osborne believed that a landscape painting should begin on location, but that its poetic essence should be completed in the solitude of the artist’s studio. Paquet experienced a demanding and rewarding apprenticeship, in which he learned to fuse field studies with the image he could see in his mind’s eye. To summarize this experience, he explains, “The intellectual process became married to the intuitive. Paint what you know as well as what you see.” He goes on to expand the possibilities, “If I have the need or desire to move a mountain, add a figure, or change the course of a river, I can do so. I am no longer shackled to nature. Now, I am painting my picture.”
