New Wave Psychedelia: Exploring Joe Roberts’ hallucinogenic art

Lucid dreaming.

A cult following in the skateboarding community, fashion collaborations with Supreme and an archive of trippy artworks putting a fresh twist on 60s psychedelia: Joe Roberts is the outsider artist you need to know.

The San Francisco-based talent’s aesthetic is part Henri Rousseau, part Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Through paintings, drawings, and mixed-media works, Roberts navigates a world of cosmic imagery, pop cultural detritus, and shifting geometric forms, bringing to life both the creeping unease and the uncanny humour of the psychedelic experience.

Featuring over 100 new and recent works, We Ate the Acid (out 4th December) is the latest product of Roberts’ visionary journeys and a testament to his expansive, singular imagination.

His book chronicles UFOs and chemical constellations as they appear in city and nature scenes alike, while alien faces and indigenous symbolism rest at the centre of geometric mandalas. Fluctuating between dark landscapes and tunneling, termite-like smiley faces, Roberts prefaces his book’s disorienting journey with an unpretentious declaration: “The way you choose to explore it is the way you choose to explore it. Make sure you take notes.”

‘We Ate the Acid,’ published by Anthology Editions, is available online here on 4th December. Follow Joe on Instagram  @lsdworldpeace.

Artwork
Joe Roberts, taken from 'We Ate The Acid' published by Anthology Editions