Joe McHale is a visual artist based out of Kearney, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney-UNK-College of Fine Arts and Humanities in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art. He has also taken classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, studied at Creighton University, and has found inspiration and education from his experiences in New York, Philadelphia, New Mexico, and Paris.

McHale’s work has appeared in the 1340Art International Art Magazine, and he has shown his work in many venues in Nebraska and across the country. These include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Moon Cafe Gallery in Sacramento, California; the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, Texas; and the Waiting Room Gallery in Denver, Colorado. In Nebraska, his work has been exhibited at UNK’s Walker Gallery, the Cambridge Museum, The Noyes Gallery in Lincoln; the Prairie Arts Center in North Platte, and the Fred Simmon Gallery in Omaha, NE.

McHale’s work is presented in abstract compositions meant to intrigue both the imagination and the intellect into contemplation of the simple, the complex, the light, the dark, and the divine. He uses vivid colors and energetic lines to create unique environments in which the imagination can play. In these paintings, each line can be a hero in a story, a field of color can be the world, and the world can be a tiny gem carried by another hero in another story.

Each piece is created to be beautiful in a way that invites and calls those who view them toward something higher. The paintings are designed to work as maps or portals that, rather than glorify something worldly, position those who see them to look deeply and with fascination at the world around them beyond its material form. His work is meant to be an arrow, pointed at a greater beauty that assists souls to desire an increase in grace in all its simplicity and drama.

Joe McHale Summer 2023
Edited by Chuck Peek