JOE MAX EMMINGER

Lonesome Joe

JOE MAX EMMINGER  :   Lonesome Joe

Artist Reception : August 2nd, Sunday, 12:oo pm
Artist Q & A : August 15th, Saturday, 4:00 pm


I first met Joe Emminger back in the late 70's when I was in the painting school at U.W.  He used to stop by to say hi to Mike Spafford or pop into the artists' studios who he knew. Joe was never an enrolled student of art but always an art maker. I suppose I thought of him as an artist from the first time I met him. The rest of us were students.

I got to know him and his wife Julie Paschkis better in the late 1980's when I was managing MIA gallery in Seattle. We visited each other often and became good friends. Joe is very much a creature of habit and paints every day. When his studio was in Pioneer Square he used to walk through the Pike Place Market every day. Now he walks Green Lake every day. This is the ground from where his images sprout; occasional travels to Oaxaca, his own backyard, the cat, a vase of flowers, Julie's face.

His paintings may appear simplistic with pure colors and strong lines but they are never one dimensional. They have been worked on, painted over, struggled with until there is a resolution. And to then look simplified is one of the hardest things for a painter to achieve. Emminger says it's like "moving furniture around". They are full of wonder but can also visit grief and disappointment. They run the full spectrum of life.

I always saw and appreciated the work of Joe's that would not show up in the galleries. The wood constructions, clay pieces and found object sculpture that were placed throughout his home and yard. In selecting work for this exhibit we both wanted to include much of this work. Often unsigned and undated it may have been sitting on a shelf or in the yard for 20 or 30 years. Or it may have been completed in the last year as the paint tray pieces were. 

"Lonesome Joe" is something of a tribute to Joe's father, Joe Emminger, who used that signature on his business cards. And perhaps a tribute to all the people, plants and animals that have enriched Joe's world throughout these more than 50 years of being an artist.