This issue’s Grand Visual Narrative is an in-depth interview with American artist Josh Keyes. We’re fans of Josh, and the feature is spread across 10 pages to really showcase his superb work. The first 3 spreads are above. As well as being an accomplished artist, Josh is an arts lecturer and tutor, and a deep thinker about his own art and its place within art history. It is always a joy to interview an artist with something to say, and Josh is one of the more articulate people we have ever interviewed. Josh really put a lot of thought into this interview, and the result is a dense and compelling insight into the artist’s art and worldview. As a small preview, here is one of Josh’s responses.

PILOT: We like how in some of your works, you present a very dystopian post-apocalyptic point of view, while other works express the utopian ideals of people like Buckminster Fuller…

Josh: I read an article recently which explained the cultural phenomenon of fixating on apocalyptic ideas and imagery. It’s called eschatology, which is a belief, or psychology, that we are approaching the End Time. To me this is a clear signal that an understanding and acceptance of change, transformation, and death is missing from our western mindset. They exist in film and literature but have not been integrated in our culture, our rites of passage of old age and dying. This fear of the end of time relates both to religious and spiritual beliefs and to our own individual relationship to mortality and to the unknown. Dealing with age, dying and how to let go are very difficult issues to deal with and accept. I don’t know if there is a contemporary global mythology or view that incorporates this. There are seasons of death and rebirth of trees and plants; can the earth itself have a cycle of decay and rebirth? Is human activity helping to speed up a naturally occurring cycle? I agree with Fuller’s conception of “spaceship earth” and that we are stewards and astronauts riding on a great spaceship. This idea he proposed so many years ago makes perfect sense. To see us, the world population as one people, one people who hopefully are tolerant and can celebrate each other’s individuality and differences. This to me is the vision we need to embrace, and Bucky, had it years ago. Religion, money, ownership and property will always be a source of trouble and I don’t see any of these disappearing any time soon. The best we can do and hope for is to work at becoming a tolerant, compassionate, yet somewhat dysfunctional global family.

Told you he was articulate. To read the full interview, pick up the new issue of Pilot Magazine…