Josué Moraes: An Exhibition of Paintings

On display at the Batavia Fine Arts Centre Gallery

January 16 – April 30, 2023

“Essentially, my art is a result of my inspirations in nature, including a variety of subjects, from landscapes and still life to the human figure.”

Enjoy the colors, textures, and images captured in the oil paintings of Josué Moraes currently on display in the gallery at the Batavia Fine Arts Centre.  Moraes, who resides in Batavia, shares his recent paintings where he explores portraits, interiors, animals, and landscapes – including the Fox River. 

About the Artist

Josué is a Brazilian native who came to America in the early two thousands in his early twenties, carrying an education in the mechanical engineering field. After settling in the Midwest of the United States, he found the need to fill in the gaps for activities during the winter time. He then discovered the celebrity artist Bob Ross on the television one day and became impressed with the ability and simplicity to work in oil painting, which forever erased Josué’s thoughts of that art medium being a messy, dirty and unachievable task. He started his approach researching the art materials, techniques and subjects very much in a way that Bob R. did in his television shows, and painted as such for a while. Josué then started studying the old masters’ works, to mention a few in particular, Titian, Caravaggio, Leonardo and Zorn, that brought a whole new range of techniques to his knowledge, where the importance of drawings, surface layering, color mixing, etc. in a painting were more significant to achieve the final result, and that’s what we observe in his more recent paintings up to this day. Lately, Josué supplements his self studies with online instructions from artists such as Rey Bustos, Glenn Vilppu, Joseph Todorovitch and others, with the goal of “mastering” this vast field of visual effects on a 2D surface. Apart from paintings, he is also active in writing calligraphy, caricature design, sculptures, gemstone lapidation and, last but not least, he is an avid Jiu Jitsu practitioner and competitor in some local tournaments.