About Joseph Ferguson
"Abstraction is what makes us human. I think that's what I'm trying to do. I want my work to evolve. I want to make forms no one has ever seen."
Raised in Bergenfield, NJ, Joseph Ferguson developed an interest in drawing and painting in high school. He sketched cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Popeye, and remembers being thrilled by images of propeller-driven aircraft. While working as a draftsman for the New York Central Railroad, he took night classes in art at Cooper Union College in New York. After serving as an engineer in the Korean War, he attended Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland on the GI Bill.
In 1957, Joseph married Isabel, his wife of 50 years. For their honeymoon they spent three months visiting the great cathedrals of France, Germany and Italy, paying special attention to their stained glass windows. They settled in Boston where Joseph opened his own studio and established his craft in the Modernist style. "Early on I wanted to experiment with putting glass in different natural settings. I wanted to take stained glass out of the cathedral and put it into the landscape."
Joseph and Isabel currently live in their Weston home – a "rambling old barn" transformed into a modern studio. Over the years, they raised three now adult sons, Chris, Mark and Eric. When not in his studio, Joseph enjoys hiking with his wife, practicing his new interest in golf and restoring his vintage 1952 British Lagonda car with its elegantly curved lines.
Joseph has exhibited his work at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, and the Chesterwood Estate and Museum in Stockbridge. Over the years he has been commissioned to create many compositions for a variety of public and private clients, such as the feature on the right, "Running Tide".
