Windsor, born in Chicago, is a steadfast, passionate pursuer of light, of its effects on color, of its transforming action upon reality. He is - one can easily deuce it - a loving survivor of the impressionistic version, that revealing discovery of painting, historically considered a child of the 19th. Century, but which, as regards its deepest essence and the endlessness of its possibilities, traces its origins so much further back and projects itself so much father into the future.

Of course, it becomes almost a heroic endeavor to maintain such a stand, given the current situation of the artistic world, of its fabulous, multidirectional openness, of the unending preoccupation of the contemporary artist, which translates itself into exploration and into a laboratory on the one hand and into a compromise with the reality he must live, on the other. Joe Innis no doubt realizes it; not only has he traveled extensively, but he has made that journey in the guise of the artist which he is, an attentive keen and lucid observer. With these tools he has managed to overcome his isolation, made up of an unfathomable wonder at the view and at the form before him, at the light which ever conditions their being. A chosen isolation where a difficult humility and an exultant attitude come together, celebrating in unison an endeavor which very well might vindicate that statement of Claude Monet's: "I paint, like the bird sings". Hence, his having set aside all theoretical formulations, all intellectual concern, only to follow the voice of his own vision, guided from within, by nature.

For the sake of this present state of his painting has Windsor traveled and seen so much, having first discovered his "way to Damascus" in the impressionistic masters which for five years he studied in France, including their English forebears. Thus can he now say: "My parents are Turner and Constable, Cezanne and Monet, Renoir and Whistler, and -perhaps - my grandparents, through some time-related whim, may be called Boudin and Jongkind". A parentage which can be traced back in his paintings, especially his landscapes-one in particular-"The River", which somehow highlights the reflections of Monet in "The Nymphs".

But having learned and assimilated the lesson of the ever changing starring role of light, of deliverance from surrounding reference points through an ambiguous corporal density, Windsor sets forth in search of his own expression pure and simple. He leaves Paris and looks to the East: Japan and Korea. There he comes upon his second revelation, which he incorporates into his painting, supporting the whole on the entirety of his previous process. Perhaps he has already found in that different "time" where beings and things come to pass, the intimate justification fro his isolation, that unique aloofness spoken of at the beginning; because beyond his reaching for that reality which seduces him, he culls from it a sort of individual freedom which allows him to choose his own code of expression, independent of the turmoil which rises all around him and with which he refuses having anything to do. There in lies the essence of his adventure and of his victory throughout it. He surely may draw close to other realities which may give him hints of his proximity to them - such as the the beautiful bridge painted in Japan, or the enchanted skies of a European shore, which empathically vibrate to the echoes of some distant Sisley - yet his attitude will not change, within his art the very spirit of his vision will survive.