I’m really a story teller.  But I draw my stories rather than speak or write them.

I use birds as a canvas or skeleton for my life experiences.  I chose birds because they are familiar to us all.  They build nests, some fly, some sing.  They are resilient and colorful. My goal was to chose birds with the qualities and color of the feeling I was experiencing. However, life and its decisive moments occasionally bow to the practical.  I spend hours drawing and that gives me a lot of time to think but sometimes I get hungry.  My favorite cereal is Lucky Charms, so occasionally yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers will find their way onto the paper.

Joseph Broghammer has developed a most original voice whose mark making can be traced from Bosch and Brueghel to Dali and Magritte and linked to the likes of John Graham and Tony Fitzpatrick. He describes his portraiture as “dry paintings”. Though one won’t find Broghammer’s idiosyncratic flock in any “Art of Bird Illustrations” catalogue, one cannot deny their pictorial beauty and his attention to species detail and palette. His pigeons, cardinals and parrots, and the others, are posed and costumed for dramatic effect befitting theme and mood.  His farm animals are undressed, instead of telling a story on the animals like he would with the birds, he likes to tell that animal’s story by having a one on one conversation with it.