JOSEPH HASKE studied painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York and earned his B.F.A. from Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1967. He teaches at Parson's School of Design in New York and has shown extensively, nationally and internationally. HASKE has been honored with inclusion in the Whitney Museum of Art's annual (1971) and biennial (1972) exhibitions.

"Life Magazine, in 1959, was a huge qualifier of American values. It ran a photo article on the Abstract Expressionists ... I decided then, at fifteen, not only that I wanted to do what they had done, but that I could do it." — Joseph Haske

HASKE arrives at his delicate, scrolling imagery through intuitive means, much as did the Abstract Expressionists who grabbed his imagination at an early age. He views abstract vocabulary as a constantly shifting and perpetually self-refining entity, and he mines its potential, filtering it through various historical concerns and new vantage points.

HASKE'S paintings grapple with the dichotomy between generation and decay, sexuality and death. The forms have a sensuous, languid quality, while the grounds he prepares tend to be stony, aged, and brittle-looking. His lyrical forms are stained and sanded on surfaces made from gesso and marble dust. They suggest weathered walls, though less the walls of a contemporary painter than those of fresco painters in ancient Pompeii, which now reveal only bits of design that once had a logic we cannot now perceive.

Presence and absence play a great role here, as the forms are partially wiped away and erased, hinting at an ebb and flow over time. However, HASKE resists a surrender to times gone by. His paintings are contemporary in the way they have worked from modern abstraction to develop a personal language created from different cultures, present and past.