Joe Broghammer obtained a B.F.A. from the University of South Dakota, Vermillion. He also completed graduate work at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has exhibited his work all over the United States, Holland, Germany, Mexico, and Italy. Broghammer has developed an 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 has also given his portraiture an undeniable personality or character; a mask, as it were, that reveals as well as conceals. This persona is then further enhanced by each portrait’s individual iconography that enhances any possible interpretation. Though Broghammer has specific, meaningful events and characters that are represented in each piece, it is ultimately pointless to attempt to decipher them in that manner. His work is personal, lyrical, and wonderfully bizarre despite their familiarity. They take advantage of our curiosity and our love of nature. Yet, they have just enough attitude to let us know that we are in his world and on his terms. Created in the private cosmos of the artist, they simply resonate as symbolic and satirical references to a macrocosm of what must be described as the human condition.