Joe Andoe (American, b.1955) is a New York-based painter, renowned for his minimal landscapes and dream-like depictions of horses, deer, dogs, buffalo, wolves, and flowers. Born in Tulsa, OK, Andoe was raised in a part-Cherokee farming family. After leading a turbulent, drug-heavy life as a young adult in the early 1970s, Andoe went on to earn an MFA from the University of Oklahoma, and has lived in New York since 1985. His elegantly pared-down images of animals and landscapes reference his roots in the Great Plains. Andoe’s instantly recognizable oil paintings are created by applying paint, incising the outlines of his subjects, and then wiping away the wet paint to reveal the coarsely textured canvas underneath. This original reductive technique contrasts the dense, velvety blackness of the background paint with the rough canvas surface.

Andoe’s extensive exhibition record includes a 2004 show at Feigen Contemporary in New York, where the artist returned to the nocturnal, barren landscapes of his youth, populated by images of automobiles, beer cans, and alluring young women. Although largely reliant on images of American youth, the hazy and melancholy quality of Andoe’s works evokes such European Symbolist influences as Edvard Munch.

Andoe’s paintings are represented in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.