American
b. 1955, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Lives and works in New York, New York
1981 – Received M.F.A. from the University of Oklahoma, Norman

Joe Andoe is a New York-based painter, renowned for his minimal landscapes and dream-like depictions of horses, deer, dogs, buffalo, wolves, and flowers. His elegantly simplified images of animals and landscapes reference his roots in the Great Plains. Beginning with a blank canvas, he applies a layer of gesso to the canvas. Once the gesso has dried, he applies paint, incising the outlines of his subjects. He then wipes away some of the wet paint, leaving built-up washes of color.

Andoe strives for an utter distillation of image, ground, and color in his work. He is bent on creating pared-down, timeless, and generic pictures; an attitude that extends to his use of a monochromatic, earth-colored ground. Andoe explains, By using earth colors, I further distill my images to next to nothing. I tend to economize. I want to reduce images to their blueprint.

Using an unconventional reductive technique, Joe Andoe paints monochromatic and earthen-colored farm animals (particularly horses), horns, and other natural and household subjects. To begin with he usually covers primed canvas or paper with a single color and incises the outline of his subject. He then creates the image by wiping away the layers of still wet paint within the outline. The contrast between the density of the background and the image comprised of the smeared and blurred underlying surface creates a sunken relief within the painted background. The shifts in tone and shadow are intended to eerily evoke twilight landscapes and dreams. Andoe is also an accomplished memoirist, best known for Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed (2007), a meditation on his path to becoming an artist.

Joe Andoe’s works have been featured in exhibits internationally and also in numerous museums, including the Denver Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2007 Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX
2004 Feigen Contemporary, New York, NY
2002 Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NB
2000 SOMA Gallery, La Jolla, CA
University at Buffalo Art Gallery Research Center in Art & Culture, Buffalo, NY
Gallery Simonne Stern, New Orleans, LA
1999 Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa OK
Blum Helman Gallery, New York, NY
KOPAC, Seoul, Korea
1998 Meredith Long & Company, Houston, TX
1996 Blum Helman Gallery, New York, NY
1995 Blum Helman Gallery, New York, NY
Milliventi Sperone, Torino, Italy
Margulies Taplin Gallery, Coral Gables, FL
1993 Gallery Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland
The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, MO
1992 Jason Rubell Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
1991 Yodo Gallery, Osaka, Japan
Gallery Busche, Cologne, Germany
1990 Blum Helman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
University of Oklahoma Museum of Art, Norman, OK
Gallery Daniel Templon, Paris, France
1989 Dart Gallery, Chicago, IL
1988 Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York, NY
1986 White Columns White Room, New York, NY

Selected Public and Private Collections:
The Detroit Museum Of Art, Michigan
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth University, New Hampshire
Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Fine Art, Boston
The Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri
San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, California
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska
Whitney Museum of Art, New York