Joe Kaz’s Fascinating Footsteps at the Artists’ Gallery
by Gwenn Seemel
The Lambertville art world is full of bucolic landscapes, but, among the many lovely forest and river scenes, the paintings of Joe Kazimierczyk—or Joe Kaz for short—stand out.
I first noticed Kaz’s work on one of my visits to our sweet little town, long before I moved here in 2022. In that moment, the self-taught artist’s jewel-like paintings stunned me twice over: initially by catching my attention at all, considering landscapes aren’t usually my thing, and then with the way they reveal the painter’s love of his media, both oil and acrylic.
Kaz’s work isn’t painterly in the same way that a lot of art in the region is. It doesn’t emphasize large expressive brushstrokes in a typical modern-day Impressionist style. Rather, the New Jersey artist embraces the subtly different personalities of each of his chosen pigments and paints.
For example, he often uses a more translucent wash of color to capture how light plays through water, as in the stream in Still Note, which is currently on display at the Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville. The browns of the creek are applied in such a way that the white of the linen support shows through in places, creating an almost-rust color that feels a lot like a clear placid stream on a winter day.
Kaz includes touches of orangey-brown in the trees of the foreground, bringing the viewer’s eye from the far bend of the creek at the heart of the painting back to the stark vertical shapes in the foreground. And that’s all in a 6 x 6 inch composition that, to my eye, positively overflows with the joy of a painter exploring the many whites of a winter landscape.
In Ramapo Autumn, like in many of his pieces, Kaz sets a pop of bright color among more muted tones. In this case, it’s the blue at the lower left that delights me. It does a good job of evoking the way the sky is reflected on calm water, but it’s the contrast between the light wash of blues and the more opaque white of the sun’s reflection on the water that makes this composition so compelling.
Kaz, who keeps a comprehensive catalog of his work on his site, lives on the Sourland Mountain near Neshanic Station. He finds a lot of his subject matter in the area immediately surrounding his home while on hiking and bicycling trips.
The painter has been a part of the Artists’ Gallery co-op for years and exhibits there regularly. Visit the space at 18 Bridge Street in Lambertville before August 3rd to see these two paintings and many more in person. Kaz’s work is in the large back room, where they’re part of a show called Footsteps - Journeys Near and Far. The Artists’ Gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays, 11 am to 6 pm.
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