Failure is always just a brush stroke away.
Joe McAleer’s words may sound simple or scary, depending on how you take it, but that’s what he’s learned from spending six decades sitting in front of a half-finished canvas, a lesson that’s dared him to be different and think outside the box when he’s ready to create something new.
McAleer started out as a basketball player at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), but during his second semester he enrolled in an art course that changed everything. He eventually transferred to Rowan University because they offered an art program that TCNJ didn’t have. All the while he continued to play basketball, so he thinks that may have contributed to him standing out among the others.
“I was sort of the black sheep of the art department,” he said. “Everybody was into their outfits, their blacks [clothing], and I was a whole different scene.”
After graduating from Rowan in 1966 with a degree in Fine Art, McAleer spent the next 40 years teaching. That journey was significant because, as he shared, everything he’s learned about art, he’s learned from his profession.
“I had my own style of teaching where I taught kids how to draw and I would say, ‘This is our studio. I’m an artist, and you’re an artist,’” he explained. “I taught in a very encouraging way. Everybody has to find their own way.”
McAleer has experimented with almost every medium under the sun, whether that’s oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas, pen, pencil or watercolor, just to name a few, but he’s also found a way to work with simple objects. For example, while teaching pencil drawing, he had hundreds of small, used pencils left over. That inspired a series of pencil collage/paintings using paint, pencils and observations.
All Joe McAleer’s artwork comes from life experience.
“I had a project where I was teaching kids to draw with pencils and kids would use the pencils and then be done,” he said. “I’m walking out of the school, and I see a pencil in the parking lot that was crushed, so I started putting them all together. I made several of them and then I was done. It’s amazing, all of a sudden, you’re done.”
All McAleer’s work comes from his own personal experience with life. The work that he’s done for the last several years involves what he calls “erasing.” Using mostly an opaque, layering process, he erases large passages of previously created forms. Repeating that process of layering several times offers all different possibilities of discovery. But even so you’ll find that a lot of his work comes in a series, and there’s only one way he knows when it’s finished.
“I know when I’m done when I’m not getting the same reaction to what I’m doing on the surface,” he said. “It’s almost as if you’re starting something and you’re seeing how far you can push it, and you push it and you go, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll try and do this, or what would it look like if I were to try and do this a little differently?’ But then you run out of gas.”
McAleer’s work has been displayed in several galleries including the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia and the Locks Gallery, and he’s also participated in exhibitions at the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown and the Philadelphia Sketch Club, just to name a few. But while he’s splitting his time between his studio in Moorestown and his studio in Florida, he’s still just simply doing what he loves.
“I was always interested in creativity and not having to sell my work to live,” he said. “I could do what I wanted. What a privilege and a gift for an artist. If you really like what you’re doing, then it isn’t so much a job.”
