Joseph Conrad-Ferm is the uber-artist behind Kapow’s inaugural Artist Series – a range of men’s leggings inspired by real-life artworks created by epic individuals. This is one dude who epitomises the Kapow lifestyle – he doesn’t have a college arts degree, he just does his thang. He’s brave, unboring, and he throws himself at the world like the creative bloody genius that he is.

Born in 1975, and raised in New Canaan, CT., Ferm did not discover his need to paint until winter in 2001. “In late December, in the boiler room of my mother’s basement, with no reference point, I felt compelled to paint. Having no formal art training, apart from elementary and secondary school classes, my first efforts, while described as crude by some, were the foundation that I have built my creative voice on. I’ve been able to express the joys and pitfalls, of my total life experience, through a language that’s universal.”

With over 1,000 finished works, on paper, canvas, and wood, his paintings are in public and private collections worldwide, including a recent museum acquisition. Ferm has over 60 solo and group shows to his credit, with a recent solo show @ the Coral Springs museum of art, in south FL.

“I don’t have a college art degree and I don’t have an art critics vocabulary. I paint when I’m feeling good and I paint when feeling otherwise. I find the right music to fit my mood and I go to work, though work is probably not the right word for it. It used to pour out of me, as fast as I could move the brush, though I’ve since learned to restrain my efforts. My recent process in the studio has become quite intense, by design. My intention is to reveal a complex and timeless process that is easy to engage.”

Ferms’ work is used extensively by interior designers, has been seen in design publications in the U.S. and Europe, and can be found on several television shows. He is actively working with the Paul Fisher gallery of West Palm beach FL., the Gallery at Four India on the island of Nantucket, MA., andFRG Objects and Design located in the Hudson valley of NY. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah Conrad-Ferm (also an artist) and their two boys. He is currently employed full time as a registered nurse, in a critical care setting, at two area hospitals.

An avid cyclist, his free time is spent riding the roads and trails of the Catskill mountains.  “For me, there is an immense source of joy and inspiration, in pushing my physical body to its limits. There is a depletion of the physical and a filling of the spirit that happens simultaneously, when cycling.”

Check out Joseph’s original artworks that inspired the new Kapow Meggings designs Disarray and Duke of Mayhem: