Joshua Meyer, “Eight Approaches,” 2022, oil on board, 40 x 100 inches. Image courtesy of BYU Museum of Art.

Downstairs at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, between an exhibition highlighting Christian art from the 14th century to the present and two others exploring contemporary American art from the 1960s to the present, hangs a single work by Massachusetts artist Joshua Meyer. Or, rather, eight works hung together and meant to be seen as one. During an artist talk at the museum on November 20, the artist described his artistic process and how it relates to “Eight Approaches,” which is on exhibit through January 18, 2025.

Meyer, who graduated with a B.A. from Yale University and also studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, initially painted with brushes, crafting highly detailed, realistic works. However, he soon found this approach stifling. “The first real pivot point was when I realized that those paintings, even the ones I was happiest with, were too intellectual,” Meyer explains. Seeking immediacy and visceral connection, he abandoned brushes in favor of palette knives, squeegees, and other tools that challenged him to rethink his marks.

This decision led to a shift in his artmaking. “The knives forced me, with every mark, to rethink what my language was,” Meyer says. “You can’t blend things neatly or make long lines. You have to build one color up against another to create space.” This layering process became central to his work, with each painting revealing its history through visible marks and accumulated gestures. Meyer likens this method to creating a narrative, where the viewer can trace the painting’s evolution over time.

Detail from one of the panels of Joshua Meyer’s “Eight Approaches.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.

Meyer’s work is steeped in the traditions of modern and contemporary art, with influences ranging from Frank Auerbach and Philip Guston to Giacometti and Pollock. “A painting isn’t a thing; it’s a process,” Meyer reflects, citing Pollock’s dynamic drip paintings as an example. “When you look at a Pollock, you’re watching Pollock in motion. It’s like watching a dancer—you’re seeing the painting unfold.”

This understanding of painting as a time-based medium finds a direct parallel in Meyer’s Eight Approaches. Each panel captures not only the act of creation but also the layers of thought, revision, and discovery that inform it. “The paintings are buckets of time,” Meyer says. “They accumulate marks, ideas, and contradictions, because no single day—or single thought—defines them.”

Though he doesn’t generally work with a religious vocabulary and doesn’t consider himself a religious painter (or at least not a maker of devotional work), Meyer sees the act of painting is deeply intertwined with his philosophical and spiritual beliefs. He sees parallels between his artistic process and the Biblical story of creation, where God evaluates each day’s work before continuing. “At the end of every day, God steps back, looks at what He’s done, and says, ‘How did I do?’” Meyer explains. “That’s exactly what I do in the studio. You make something, step back, and then go back into the project with new ideas.”

The structure of “Eight Approaches” stems from Meyer’s reflections on light and time, themes rooted in his practice as both an artist and an observant Jew. He drew inspiration from the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, during which light and time are marked through the nightly addition of candles to the menorah. “It’s the holiday where we’re striving for just a little more light each day,” Meyer explains. “That idea of seeking and searching for light felt like a perfect metaphor for what I do in the studio.”

Detail from one of the panels of Joshua Meyer’s “Eight Approaches.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.

This connection led Meyer to conceive of the piece as a visual menorah, with eight paintings arranged side by side. The ninth element—the shamash, or helper candle—is symbolically represented by the viewer, who animates the paintings through their engagement. “You, the viewers, are the shamash,” Meyer says. “You’re meant to light the paintings by interacting with them, bringing your own stories and experiences into the dialogue.”

Meyer intentionally designed “Eight Approaches” to resist a single narrative or resolution. While the paintings are interconnected through overlapping lines, colors, and patterns, their order was not fixed while he was creating them. The BYU exhibition is the third time the artist has exhibited the work and he says by now they’ve taken on a fixed order. “The final organization isn’t meant to tell a specific story,” Meyer notes. “It’s meant to suggest a story. I want you to rearrange them, approach them from different angles, and find your own connections.” This open-ended quality encourages viewers to reflect on their own relationships with time, change, and creativity. “Everyone is complicated, with internal contradictions,” he says. “Why shouldn’t a painting reflect that?”

Joshua Meyer: Eight Approaches, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, through Jan. 18, 2025

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.