SAM JOESBURY

ARTIST STATEMENT

Through my work, I explore relationships between music, visual imagery and spectacle. Each drawing is an emotional response to music, informing physical manifestation of action self-portraiture contained within a parallel world. One example is Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon: The End of Day (2009), offering emotional fulfilment through escapism, dreams and anxious nightmares. The compositions are built around complex scenarios which show scenes of cult-like events of infatuation with a messiah figure, celebrity worship and ‘groupthink’. The drawings are critical rather than celebratory; they critique masculinity, obsessions and pose questions around the contemporary attitudes of young men, all while fronting spectacle.

The drawings are intentionally magical, they use spatial, figure and scale distortions, unusual colour combinations, collage and photorealism. Contained within the contemporary genre of ‘world building’, they are parallel to my own psyche. The philosopher R.G. Collingwood said, ‘Magic is useful, in the sense that the emotions it excites have a practical function in the affairs of every day’. While the drawings present fantastical images with ‘saturated characters’, they also offer a sharp commentary on contemporary male behaviours, condemning intrigue in their sometimes nonsensical scenes.

Heart Of A Lion, 2024, Graphite and Coloured Pencil, 71cm x 100cm.

Sky Might Fall, 2025, Graphite and Coloured Pencil, 100cm x 76cm.

Enter Galactic (from the perspective of Cult Prophet), 2025, Graphite and Coloured Pencils, 100cm x 76cm.

EMAIL:

samueljoesbury@icloud.com

INSTAGRAM:

samjoesbury_art