Rural Electrictrification 24 x 30, oil on mounted linen, Joe PaquetA cup of coffee.
Two gallons of regular.
The lunch bucket.
It was a time before we had too many choices and too few.
In a world where the chain store and the track house proliferate we pay a price; the generesizing of America. This loss of individual character stultifies the senses and numbs the spirit.
Ultimately, what we pay for convenience we lose in character and individual identity.
Paquet & Cosby hope to capture the remnants of America's search for that identity through it's places of work, rest, & refreshment.
Video courtesy of Northland's News Center
This is a life long project by two artists that found each other through repeated art events over the course of 10 years.
One from the east and one from the west.
The work that both painters enjoy most are snapshots of American life. Moments in time that are familiar to all who have traveled in America or lived here. The rapidly changing corner store or café in the small town is being replaced with the chain store or fast food restaurant, altering our landscape along with it.
This change is occuring rapidly.
John Captures an honest view of the social world on the streets and in the watering holes and Joe brings the railroad, warehouses, mills, and buildings that provide the reason for the town to exist.
After many years of getting together once or twice a year to paint the vanishing face of America Joe and John realized this subject is what they both relate to and feel most passionately about.
Together these two painters are documenting the shadows of the people and places which are slowly dimming in our collective conciousness.
Joe and John do not paint the past they paint where the past intersects with the present, providing a truthful picture of where we are today as a nation.