Pamela Joseph

Rousseau Cinématique consists of nine paintings that are based on Henri Rousseau’s The Horse Being Attacked by a Jaguar. In 2007, Joseph created a collage of the image on a postcard, interspersing body parts from Mexican porno comic books throughout the landscape. These new elements created a sense of punctuation in the overall chaos of the jungle scene. Pam recognized that Rousseau’s paintings have a shallow depth of field and limited perspective. Since comics and the idea of sequential narrative are influences in her work, she conceived of a cinematic approach to the painting.  As in the movies, the viewer’s attention goes from a close-up to a wide-shot in a series of differently scaled panels.
 
Rousseau Cinématique is a part of the series, Postcard Paintings, which explores other artists’ work while juxtaposing Joseph's own imagery within it. She incorporates collage body parts from erotic Mexican comic books.  Much as a modern disc jockey remixes music, Pam works on the computer by overlapping and integrating the new information into the work of other artists. From these permutations, she creates a painting on a larger scale in oils on linen that incorporates the original collaged elements. The enlarged scale of the body part has a dot-matrix degradation that contrasts with the classical oil-painting technique. As she work evolves, it becomes a dialogue between Joseph and the other artist. Pam acknowledges the other style, while asserting her own vision in developing the image. In this way, she hopes to present a new interpretation of the original for today’s contemporary audience.