Early Figure Painting 1979 oil on canvas 13x11” $1800
Joe O’Sickey may not have been the best at verbalizing how to paint better, but he could demonstrate it very well; he was an excellent painter. I recall his doing a demonstration once. He was angry that no one was approaching the painting correctly and indignantly said, “None of you has ever seen a painter paint before. Put a sign on me, ‘Painter’”… and then he painted for about 20 minutes as we watched. He demonstrated how colors affected colors beside and around each other, and how a painter adjusts them as he proceeds, and how he could make a metallic object glow by manipulating the colors, values, and intensities of the juxtaposed color shapes around it. I began to try to adopt his methods and began to see success. I felt high praise when Joe walked around the room railing at all the terrible figure paintings, then came to THIS one, the one here in this show, and grunted, “Well, this isn’t bad…”
