J. Richard Briggs (b. 1990), known to family and friends as Joel, is a painter based in Portland, Oregon, working primarily in acrylic on wood panel. His work spans large-scale Pacific Northwest landscapes and figurative paintings rooted in biblical and mythological narrative. These two bodies of work are animated by a single question of how the self is located in relation to place, faith, and others. His influences include Byzantine iconography, rabbinical Jewish storytelling, Eastern European sculpture, and 20th-century American regionalism.

In his own words:

“Art is my way of exploring and trying to understand who I am. I am a gay man. I am a Christian. I grew up in a strict fundamentalist homeschool family in the Deep South. Creativity was a world I could readily escape into. Today my commitments to my faith and to my husband are immensely important to me. Yet both of these realities seem to put me at vast odds with various different communities. My ‘self’, with all its nuanced and particular complexity, seems to be an anomaly. Painting is my own way of attempting to externally process this perceived complexity. It is my means of naming all my feelings of exile and displacement. And it is my way of locating what a sense of ‘self’ is in relation to my physical setting, body, faith, story, and the other ‘selves’ around me. The lifelong question I have wrestled with is: “who or what am I in relation to _____?” With this sense of ‘adriftness’ my art becomes a language for me to attempt articulation at a sense of self… it is an endeavor to create a place of belonging for the complex ‘self’ that is me, named through the work, and offered to the world so that I might be known.”

Briggs studied representational art at Watts Atelier and Hebrew language and Jewish art history at the University of Haifa and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His exhibitions include “Radical Hospitality” (Frame and Hang Art Gallery, 2018), “Subversive Faith” (Liberty Station, San Diego, 2023), and recent shows at Red E Café Gallery (December 2025), GO Gallery (March 2026), and Portland Arts Collective (April 2026). He is represented by GO Gallery (formerly Guardino Gallery) in Portland’s Alberta Arts District.