Ryan Josey

RYAN JOSEY is an artist and writer from Nova Scotia. They have been supported by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts; Arts Nova Scotia; and have participated in residencies internationally including the New York Arts Practicum (New York); the Centre for Art Tapes (Halifax); the Arteles Creative Centre (Finland); the Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax); Plug In ICA partnered with DIS.art (Winnipeg); and Eastern Edge (St.John’s).

Their writing has been published by Visual Arts News, C Magazine, Flash Art, Commo and other outlets. They work with The Blue Building Gallery in Halifax and their experimental writing is published irregularly @ryryjo on Instagram.

ryandjosey@gmail.com

31. i want always
to be in the warmth of your touch,

I am a complex person with a rich and sustaining interior life. Sometimes I don’t want a boyfriend.

There are times I don’t want my own personhood, let alone
perform it for a mysterious profit system; let alone
somebody else’s.

thank you @thebluebuildinggallery for the opportunity to show my work and stand with the works of my peers @art_toronto this past weekend.

It’s an exhausting and exhilarating privilege. I am happy to be rebounding at home.

Thank you for all t

Country boys do it better.
Driving puts my thoughts in order.

There is a particular feeling to the responsibility to speak. But to who? But to what? And then to choose the words.

How to filtre ash from air and make a brick.

Of all the things being

healed, rested, fallowed
I painted all the pages yellow
this was a house of mourning no more.

The Lesson of Aries
Was it,
wood must drift to burn?
Or,
all things must renew?

I’m sure there was fire
and an imperative
easily mistaken
for a command.

For me, to love
has meant
to understand.

I’ve learned, to love
for others
means

1. contenders

2. trees, three ways

3. a poem about sex
as a leaf, skimming the surface
as your gaze, Protagonist
looks up from the bottom
discerning shadows through dancing light
which may be leaves, or x lovers.

I miss the music of myself.
There I go again
boxing myself in
This time (look) with walnut
and with white.
Cold prison yearning
for peace, I imagine.
What else are all these clean lines for?

Then in walked the sun
wearing the same red shorts as fore

I am sorry,
(or so I should have told my lover)

I have to
go to bed with this feeling.

There we were
watching the two of them swim

in each other’s
flesh under those lights.

And then I
on the ride home watching

the lamps flare
through

thank you @foireplural 🤲

left:
Midline Atlantic, Green-screen Vertebrae. 2019
oil on oak plywood, walnut frames
approx. 31 x 20 inches

right:
Alone w/o Allies. 2019
oil on oak plywood, walnut frames
approx. 28 x 20 inches

Thank you everyone who

30, eh?
Go careful
There’s a storm out there
And somewhere on the wind
A voice

Carrying truth
Whipping you one way
And another
Listening, waiting

To see if you are listening
If you are able to bend,
keep course or grow
If you are able

To

seaweed dripped off of rock and sea dripped off of seaweed forming cold fangs of froth that leapt forward and gnawed back at the coast. How anything could survive here—let alone a thing as vibrant and abundant as seaweed—was some sort of

I have a fantasy
we meet and recollect
you inquire as to the whereabouts
of a particular pair of pants
(an emblem of an era)

“Oh,” I am bashful.
“I got rid of them years ago.”
Here the fantasies diverge

In one, it’s n

out of the hole
came the sun
hot like necessity
viscous and bright

there was something
in the milk in the 90s
that I was left out of
it appears now as the yellow

tips of tulips
on the desk of
the woman sitting in the
window opposite mine

my work, “The heart/mind as a small well-managed fire” 📦 is on view now @imc5533 as part of “The Shape of Your Error” curated by @kickemtothehole.

“The heart/mind…” is a sketch/study/collage of a story cr

This is my new painting, “A Mask for Pathos.”

Here is something I wrote while painting it:

I was halfway through Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse” when I stopped and read “The Handmaid’s Tale”. I

Sometimes images are found and sometimes you have to go looking for them. My favourites are often the ones that fall into your lap. I flick open my phone and there they are: the camera has been left on and all I have to do is tap to receive them. Lik

Life points its camera at you
around the age of 15. Suddenly
you realize you have hands for the first time.

Pockets, you think, pockets.
And stuff them in. It’s so easy
in the dark, to forget your hands are free.

So easy, to mistake the wa

About

ryandjosey@gmail.com