Haley Josephs

“I’m interested in accessing other worlds. What’s behind the veil?”

SHIRT BY COMMISSION, SHOES BY JW ANDERSON.

PORTRAITS BY MALIK DUPREE

TEXT BY TYLER AKERS

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In a television episode of Unsolved Mysteries, a reenactment shows Patricia Meehan disappearing after a car accident in Montana in 1989. Witnesses saw her walk into the Montana wilderness unexplainably after a crash, and while there were over 5,000 sightings of her reported in the following months and years, she was never found. Artist Haley Josephs remembers watching this episode about her aunt’s tragic and mysterious disappearance many times during her childhood, and images from the episode often replay in her head. Along with her own sister’s murder, the story of her aunt’s disappearance shaped her family’s trauma. For many years, they felt it was difficult to talk about, but when Josephs began to paint, she was determined to mine through the emotional weight of these experiences and find a way to honor beauty in death as a journey we all share. “I’m interested in accessing other worlds. What’s behind the veil?” she wonders. Her aunt and sister would become archetypes for the figures that emerged in following years. While at first her paintings were more directly referential to her family members, in time they became more symbolic of life’s journey, overcoming struggle, transformation through death and rebirth, the ebullience and intensity of love, and the many possibilities of an afterlife.