Josh Garfield, 64, marketing executive and oil painter
Josh Garfield, 64, of Ardmore, a marketing executive and oil painter, died Wednesday, Nov. 4, of cancer at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He and his family had just relocated to Florida after 26 years in Ardmore.
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Josh Garfield, 64, of Ardmore, a marketing executive and oil painter, died Wednesday, Nov. 4, of cancer at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He and his family had just relocated to Florida after 26 years in Ardmore.
Mr. Garfield was marketing director of Garfield Refining Co., a precious-metals business that has been in the Garfield family for three generations. He held the position for many years, working from an office in the 800 block of East Cayuga Street in Philadelphia.
Born in the city and educated in Lower Merion and Boston, Mr. Garfield aspired to become an artist. His oil paintings can be found in private collections and institutions across the country.
During his peak output in the 1970s and 1980s, he showed his work at the Suzanne Gross Gallery in Philadelphia, his family said.
His work focused on representations of cows, Mexican banditos, the tropics, Mark Twain, and astronauts.
Perhaps his most ambitious work was a series of five large panels depicting identical female nudes standing against a background of various colors.
He also painted portraits on commission.
A pop-art picture of a Heinz ketchup bottle, which he painted as a teenager, is still on the third floor of a Bala Cynwyd house where the Garfields once lived. The owners have made the sale of the house contingent on preservation of the painting, his family said.
He designed the book cover for Painting Life: The Art of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, by Robert L. Bonn, and many others, his family said.
The son of Samuel M. and Nancy Hoffman Garfield, he grew up in Bala Cynwyd and graduated from Lower Merion High School.
Mr. Garfield attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before returning to Philadelphia, where he held an eclectic assortment of jobs to subsidize his artistic ambitions.
His life changed when he met Denise Kelley. The two married in 1988 and had two sons. He put down his paintbrush for decades, resuming work shortly before retiring earlier this year.
In person, Mr. Garfield was "very witty, very smart. He knew everything," his wife said. "Though he was sometimes quiet, he was very much fun to be around."
Besides his wife, he is survived by sons Samuel and Benjamin "Bo"; and two brothers.
Plans are pending for a memorial gathering in Philadelphia.
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