Jo Caldwell

Artist's Bio

Essentially my paintings are about people, their appearance, their confusions and their inability to be a peace. Initially I was fortunate enough to study at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School with German Expressionist and encaustic painter Karl Zerbe. There I was free to roam the corridors of a great museum and to learn the technical processes of oil painting. 

After living in virtual isolation for a number of years in the rain forest of Costa Rica, I ended up in San Diego, earning a BA in Visual Arts at UCSD. There I was immersed in  art theory under the tutelage of an outstanding faculty. Farber, Patterson, Scanga, Antin and Silva to name a few. I was subsequently accepted into the graduate program at Cal State Fullerton and received an MFA in Painting and Drawing in 1993. The following Fall I taught a class in Beginning Painting at CSUF. 

I have exhibited in juried exhibitions in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties showing at the Galeria Otra Vez, California Center for the Arts and San Diego Museum of Art  among others. And I have had invitational exhibits at the Downey Art Museum, The Irvine Fine Arts Center, MiraCosta College and Southwestern College.

My work is largely autobiographical often casting friends and relatives as subjects for my work. But my subject is gender dictated and socially directed at our need to separate and distort the essential unity of all humanity.