Joe Coleman (painter)

Joseph Coleman (born November 22, 1955) is an American painter, illustrator, actor and performance artist. He has been described as the "walking ghost of Old America" by his wife, photographer Whitney Ward, for his over-riding interest in the historical arcana and personae that often populate his paintings. Of Coleman's work, The New York Times wrote that, “If P. T. Barnum had hired Breughel or Bosch to paint sideshow banners, they might have resembled the art of Joe Coleman.” While Berlin's Tagesspiegel said of Coleman, "Like [George] Grosz in the 1920s, he holds a drastic mirror up to his own times."

Coleman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His apartment and studio, called the Odditorium, is a living museum to his obsessions; a collection of artifacts, objects and documents from wax museums, crime museums, churches, pathology museums and sideshows.