Joshua deGroot is an artist/parent/male living in the qathet region on the coast of the Salish Sea. He is an MFA candidate at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His current artistic research seeks to make visible the relationships between the identities of artist/parent/male.

Most of his work is oil on canvas using foraged and purified pigments from places of significant meaning to him. He grows dye plants to use as colour sources, forages for earth pigments at sites significant to him and uses these to create paintings that engage the ideas inherent in his identity.

As a father of three he has spent much of his recent time reflecting creatively on the joy of parenting, the possibility of loss and the ways in which parenting and partnering create real connection. This is done against a backdrop of grief both personal and collective and seeks to reflect the balance of these elements in the work.

Recently his work has expanded to include a multidisciplinary practice incorporating video, photography, and other creative practices to widen the scope of creative reflection.

Much of this work is created using archaic media such as early 20^th century film cameras, typewriters and telephones to reflect engagement with bygone sensory tools to create viewer experiences folded in time. This work is in conversation with concepts of hauntology, the idea that the past is not done with us and we are not done with the past.