Aarons Galaxy

About Aarons Galaxy

Acrylic with rhinestones on canvas. A compelling and inventive abstract painter, Joseph Drapell’s stunning work has long been considered masterful by art critics and collectors alike. The Czech-born artist creates remarkably vibrant paintings using trowels, serrated wide blades and his fingers to apply thick layers of colour. Drapell is known for his ‘compression technique’--applications of thick paint or impasto that produce highly textured pieces.
Aaron’s Galaxy illustrates his superb use of colour, texture, and form to render an almost ‘otherworldly’ landscape in glistening waves of silver, black, pink, purple, white, and turquoise blue. The inspired and unusual application of diamonds on the borders is a signature feature of some of Drapell’s imaginative work.

“I started to make gradations in my work to increase the impasto because the shiny paint creates a drawing which responds to the light in the room and the diamonds become symbols and the lines of diamonds are outlines of figures, why not?” Joseph Drapell

After emigrating to Canada, Joseph Drapell studied art at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. There he met Canadian artist Jack Bush and the renowned art critic Clement Greenberg who influenced his work. Inspired by the abstract paintings of Morris Louis, he experimented with different techniques to apply wide swaths of paint in thick layers. In the 1990’s he was a founding member of a group of artists called the New New Painters that exhibited together internationally. Drapell is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and his works are held in both private and public collections in Canada and the U.S. Drapell divides his time between Toronto and a beloved island retreat in Georgian Bay.