Joel Rea

“We Are All Visitors to This Time, This Place. We Are Just Passing Through. Our Purpose Here Is to Observe, to Learn, to Grow, to Love... And Then We Return Home.” Australian Aboriginal Proverb

- Richard Purssey

You can pore endlessly over each thematic element within a piece by Australian painter Joel Rea and be stunned by the detail it contains. Each an individual masterpiece of the hyper realists art form, whether they be a businessman with briefcase clutched in hand, a dog galloping across wet sand, a tiger swimming or caught mid-pounce. But step back – and perhaps another few steps, as the scale of Joel’s work is truly heroic – and the impact of his art becomes truly apparent. These are no mere sojourns into photo realism, they are surrealism incarnate.

The surreal in Joel’s work encompasses scale, juxtaposition and time; the aforesaid galloping dog will be looming over Lilliputian-scaled people, the tiger swimming with icebergs or prowling on Daliesque twisted landscape, and the businessman? He stands or kneels casting his papers at the approaching sea, seconds from being engulfed, a futile gesture of defiance against a world damaged by his – by our – actions. More than just wondrous products of his imagination, Joel is increasingly bringing his focus to bear on the devastating impact that humanity is having on the planet on which we live and the animals we share it with. “I’m moving from a period of making very self-reflective work to now choosing an approach based on commentary and my reaction to place or time in history … the complexity of our existence saturating my every intention.”