Joe Fig has produced a broad range of paintings, sculpture, photography and drawings that explore the creative process—his own and that of others. There are three-dimensional models of artists’ studios, photographs of them and paintings of people experiencing art in galleries and museums.
With bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he is department chair of both fine arts and visual studies at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida. The college’s Sarasota Art Museum is showing the exhibition Joe Fig: Contemplating Vermeer through April 13, 2025.
Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring / Mauritshuis, 2023, oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 13 x 15¾”. Courtesy of the artist.
In 2020 he staged the exhibition Contemplation at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York, followed by Contemplating Compositions in 2023.
At that time, the gallery explained, “When we contemplate an artwork, we often distill a piece down to its elements, analyze what we see and form opinions. We uncover what is being communicated. Similarly, when making work, artists frequently pause to take a step back, look and reflect. Contemplation is as intrinsic to the creative process as the actual physical work of making an object. As Fig says, ‘It’s in this moment of seeming inactivity when the artist is working the hardest.’”
Read more at American Art Collector.
Image credit: Vermeer: Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window / Rijksmuseum, 2023, oil on linen mounted on MDF Board, 12½ x 11¼”. Courtesy of the artist.
