NEIGHBORS

A Freeporter’s quest to paint dreams

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Marc Josloff, left, talked about his paintings with Freeporter, Peggy Bickett at the Freeport Memorial Library on Jan. 8.
Marc Josloff, left, talked about his paintings with Freeporter, Peggy Bickett at the Freeport Memorial Library on Jan. 8.
Nadya Nataly/Herald

Capturing the world on his canvas has been his life’s work. Freeporter Marc Josloff, 70, is hosting an exhibit of his recent paintings and photographs at the Freeport Memorial Library throughout the month of January. A special reception is scheduled for Jan. 20 at 2 p.m. and a lecture to discuss the piece in detail is scheduled for Jan. 23 at 2 p.m.

“There was never a moment in my life that I didn’t think I wouldn’t be doing what I do now,” Josloff said. “Most of my days and when I’m dreaming is related to art in some way.”

Josloff is a graduate of Pratt Institute with a degree in art and visual communication. His work led him to work in the advertising field as well as an art teacher for a Nassau County school district. Art has been a part of his life since he can remember and he says he can’t recall a time he wasn’t painting or working on a collection of his work.

“My cousin who just turned 90 told me that by the time I was one, I was already drawing under the kitchen table and scribbling into phone books,” Josloff said with a laugh.

When he is not painting, he gives art lectures for a number of organizations and is involved in the Freeport community through organizations like Freeport Community Concert Association. He has also worked with the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport. As an artist, he believes creating roots in the community is important and has helped him to create his surrealist paintings and photographs.

At glance, according to Josloff, his collection is a representation of a dreamlike, yet realistic view of the world while finding tender moments of solitude. Through each painting and photograph, he explores a memory, a dream and a moment that gives objects personification or reveals an intimate moment in what it means to be human. Josloff infuses pastels, watercolor, latex paint or gold paint to bring his paintings to life.

As he walked through the exhibit in the library’s lobby, he animatedly talked about his never-ending search for the sublime, which is also a play on the name of the exhibit, “The Search for the Sublime… Continues.” Josloff is a surrealist painter in every sense of the practice akin to free association or stream of consciousness. Surrealism is an artistic and literary movement of proposed enlightenment during the intellectual movements in the 17th and 18th centuries.

“I’m trying to coax you into your subconscious mind so that you’re not so literal about what you see,” Josloff said. “That’s the really the essence of my work.