Joe Roland a Seattle Artist
My work moves between two kinds of memory: the ones carved into the body and the ones rooted in the natural world. Confessions in Gold focuses on the intimate terrain of the human form—its vulnerabilities, tensions, and unspoken truths—held within the glow of gold leaf and the quiet gravity of religious iconography. Where the Wild Remains turns outward, preserving fragments of the forest and the landscapes that shape us, treating leaves and textures like relics of a wildness that refuses to disappear.
Across both series, I’m drawn to what lingers: the impressions we carry, the traces we protect, and the moments we try to keep alive long after they should’ve faded. Each body of work holds onto something—whether it’s a confession or a piece of the woods—and asks what it means for anything, or anyone, to remain.