Joe Fig chairs Ringling College of Arts and Design’s fine arts and visual studies programs. He’s also an art instructor, and he teaches what he does.
Fig paints, constantly. His paintings reveal his way of looking at the world. The paintings in Fig’s contemplation series look at art lovers who look at art in assorted museums and galleries. Contemplating Vermeer is his most recent series, curated by Rangsook Yoon at Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College.
The 16 paintings in this series looks at the rapt viewers of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in 2023. It was a rare sight: 28 Vermeer masterpieces painstakingly gathered from around the world. For a very brief time, they were all in one place, making it a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Fig was there, and this series is his way of passing it on. But it’s more than that.
