Joshua Evans moves with the quiet certainty of someone who understands that growth happens over time. There is no rush in his practice and no interest in spectacle. When Hypeart visited Evans in his Brooklyn studio, where he is currently based, that mindset was easy to feel. The room was active but measured, paintings loosely leaning on corners with surfaces marked by revision. “This is the studio area. I have to keep it clean,” he says. “I cannot work in a Francis Bacon-esque studio.”
Evans grew up in Mobile, Alabama, where drawing was just part of life. It was never framed as a career or an escape plan. It was simply something that felt natural. As a quiet kid, art gave him a way to stay focused and process things internally. That relationship shifted in college, when a period of depression turned art from interest into necessity. Making work became a way to stabilize himself and move through emotions without having to explain them. Feeling, for Evans, is nonnegotiable. “What AI can never do that an artist can do,” he says, “feel.”
While studying, Evans began to understand art not just as expression but as commitment. Exposure to artists working at a high level helped recalibrate what he thought was possible. Seeing artists who looked like him operating confidently in the art world made the path feel real, not abstract. But committing to that path meant confronting what he was holding back.
“I was able to push myself to utilize the imageries and concepts that I held back for so long.”
A pivotal moment came through his mentorship with Marilyn Minter. Evans remembers a critique that changed everything. “She brought up the fact that I was talking about a story that happened in my life yet I was not fully in the work,” he says. “And when she said that it completely broke me at the time because what she said was true.” That realization forced him to step back and examine why he was hesitant to put himself fully into the work. “It came down to a lot of preconceived notions that were placed upon me since childhood, on who I should be as a person and what my work should look like.”
That reckoning led to a breakthrough. “This painting called ‘Fantasia’ was really a breakthrough for me,” Evans says. “Because I was able to push myself to utilize the imageries and concepts that I held back for so long.” From there, the work began to open up, visually and emotionally.
Evans has been painting consistently since 2018, describing his practice as “a non-linear story about my life and experiences.” Grief, loss, transformation and healing move through the work not as clean narratives but as overlapping states with much of the imagery coming from memory. “Mobile, Alabama where I’m from is on the coast,” he says. “Being by the water and going to the water is something that’s second nature to me, so naturally a lot of the flora and wildlife that you’re seeing in my work comes from that region. My hometown.” Plants and animals appear not as decoration, but as symbols of power. “I’m utilizing these plants and animals to introduce the power that surrounds us and how we also embody that power within us.”
The figures themselves are often intimate. “Most of the subject matter in my work are found images of family and friends,” Evans says, noting that the paintings currently in his studio are self-portraits. The body becomes a site of tension and transformation, something both physical and symbolic.
Surrealism plays a central role in that language, shaped in part by Evans’ early connection to anime. “My passion for anime started so early on,” he says. In one painting, wings extend from a figure’s back, drawn from a specific moment in Naruto. “In this piece in particular, like the wings, I took that from the moment in Naruto when Sasuke went curse mark two and this evolution of this change of growing power in him.”
“My work for me is all spiritual. I think what happens in this physical world is also reflected in the spiritual realm.”
Place continues to shape the work. After Mobile, Evans spent time in Birmingham where new imagery entered his visual language. “I really wanted to dive into inspirations not only from my hometown in Mobile, but also Birmingham,” he says. “When I moved there I was captivated by these cherry blossoms because they felt strange and foreign.” That sense of displacement resonated. “I related to those cherry blossoms as I was pursuing an unconventional career with very contrasting interests from my peers in such a small town, so you’ll see a lot of cherry blossoms in my paintings.”
Spirituality underpins much of Evans’ thinking. Raised Baptist, he began questioning the framework he grew up in as he got older. “Originally I grew up Baptist, my mother raised us in a church,” he says. “And as I got older, I started to question things.” That questioning opened new mental doors. “In that discovery on what higher power is for me, a lot of doors opened in my mind and it’s reflected in my work. My work for me is all spiritual. I think what happens in this physical world is also reflected in the spiritual realm.”
Each painting holds its own gravity. “With my work, I reflect on one story at a time,” Evans says. “And because my works are about the body of a human, the power within a human, there’s always a direct correlation between the body and these supernatural situations that they find themselves in.” Bodies shift, environments bend, symbols emerge and dissolve.
That same openness extends beyond painting. Evans founded Mijoshski as an extension of his values as an artist. Named in honor of his late father, the platform carries personal weight while staying grounded in process. It began with small, hands-on production, often made from his mother’s home and grew through consistency rather. It functions as another place for his work to live.
Back in his Brooklyn studio, Evans works at a steady pace, letting paintings develop without forcing them. For him, the physical and the supernatural are connected, the figures hold power because they are human first.
All images courtesy of Joshua Evans
