In Joseph Cave’s lush oils, the sun always seems to shine. Whether floral still lifes or American Scene naturalist landscapes, his subjects radiate an enthusiasm for life and art. According to him: “The paint must be joyfully applied. The process must be evident in the product… After sixty years I am still thrilled as the colors are squeezed from the tube.”
Cave was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, the state’s capital. He majored in painting at the University of Georgia from 1954 to 1958. Recalling those years, he explained: “Studying at the University of Georgia in the last half of the 1950s, we were bombarded, overwhelmed, and intimidated by the dynamics of the New York school of abstract expressionism. Occasionally I went outside, set up, and painted the landscape. It was a lot of fun, but did nothing for my G.P.A.” He spent two years with the United States Army, primarily in Germany. Upon his return in 1961, he enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute and the following year received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He proceeded to San Francisco State College (now University), where he met and married his wife Jessica and was awarded his Master of Fine Arts in 1964 with specialties in painting and printmaking.
The pair moved to Tennessee, where he held the position as a drawing and painting instructor at the Memphis Academy of Art from 1964 to 1966, and then he taught part-time at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) for the 1965 school year. Returning to San Francisco, he taught design courses part-time at the Art Institute, between 1966 and 1968. From 1967 to 1971 he was head of the art department at the Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, where he also taught art and art history. He continued to hold part-time positions in painting, first at the Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino from 1971 to 1973 and then at Mendocino Community College in Ukiah from 1979 to 1984. During this time, he painted scenes of the wine country and the coast.
Cave then took a break from living and teaching in California and relocated his family to Portugal, where he spent five years focused on rural landscapes. Upon their return to the States in 1989, the family settled first in North Carolina, followed by time along the South Carolina coast. Moving back to North Carolina, he took up residence in Hendersonville. In his depictions of rural scenery on both coasts and abroad, Cave has energetically preserved locations that are fast disappearing. And he has taken this advice to heart: “Eugene Delacroix said, ‘First, a painting must be a feast for the eyes.’ It must look good.”