Joel Sager

Nightshade

2025

Joel D. Sager (b. 1980) is a contemporary American painter of landscapes, still-life and portraiture. Often drawing on such standard subject matter with economy and singularity— a solitary figure in a room or misplaced sock on a bed— the conceptual element of his work becomes a contemplation on meaning for even the simplest objects: person, place, or thing. Sager's process often involves a distinctive mixture of media, incorporating tar with oil pigments, or wallpaper with squid ink...

Joel D. Sager (b. 1980) is a contemporary American painter of landscapes, still-life and portraiture. Often drawing on such standard subject matter with economy and singularity— a so...

"One Of The Ways" depicts a densely populated grove. As with other of Carpenter's paintings, this scene invites viewers to look closer and also to go out to explore nature. As a painter, I examine how the depiction of light contributes to our experience of paintings. The portrayal of light helps a painting to convey the atmosphere and mood of a scene, and is much of what enables a painting to convey depth and realism. Our perception of lighting features occurs largely through pathways in the brain that carry only black and white information, pathways which are distinct from areas that encode the colors and details we use to delineate specific objects. By painting in grayscale, I try to interact specifically with this region of our visual system, with the hope of conveying some of the spaciousness and emotional significance that light can imbue on scenes. Light, whether as the crisp contrast of a back-lit forest or the gray haze of an industrial landscape, is what defines a scene. Its power to communicate the feel of a place is the principle subject of my paintings. The Blue Azul Collection...

"In my paintings I take on the role of poet-painter, creating sentimental and idealized landscapes that are devoid of any figures or formal devices traditionally used to tell a story...