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5 Nov 2025
Love and Loss in Color: Josh Hickman’s Story

Josh Hickman has been creating art since he was a kid and, trust us, you can tell. He’s not just an artist, but also an author with a gift for storytelling. His latest book, Forgetting, shares the deeply personal journey of caring for his mother as she faced dementia.


Josh joined Sarah in the studio to talk about his writing, and then welcomed us into his home for an up-close tour of his art collection. It’s emotional, honest, and unforgettable.

0:00
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Host
Josh Hickman
Guest

Episode Timeline

All Episodes
02:11
Who is Josh Hickman?
09:36
What led to Josh being the only person left to care for his mother
15:31
Josh’s biggest regret in caring for his mother
22:49
What does Josh write about in Park Cities People?
27:19
Some of Josh’s creativity, especially in his painting, comes from suffering
38:02
Where is Josh’s artwork displayed?
40:44
Tour Josh’s apartment to see his artwork
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Join host Sarah Zubiate Bennett on Let’s Talk Local as she uncovers the stories, people, and places shaping Dallas, fostering a stronger and more connected community—let's get to know the real Dallas!

Full Transcript

00:00
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Hi. I'm Sara Zubiate Bennett, and one of my favorite things about Dallas is how much creative energy this city has. Every week on Let's Talk Local, I get to meet and highlight some of the incredible talent right here in our community, and this week's guest is no exception. I'm excited for you to meet Josh Hickman, an incredibly gifted artist and author of a new book called Forgetting. It's a deeply personal story about his complicated relationship with his mother as he cares for her throughout dementia. It's raw, it's emotional and it's something I know so many of us can relate to on some level. But beyond his writing, Josh's visual art is absolutely stunning. He even invited me to his apartment to see his pieces up close and let me tell you, it was an experience. I can't wait for you to hear his story and see his work for yourself. So settle in, hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and enjoy this conversation with Josh Hickman.
01:03
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Josh. Yes. A, thank you so much for reaching out to us. Yeah. We get a lot of people reaching out to us these days.
01:12
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And so looking at your background, you're a man of many talents.
01:17
Josh Hickman
Oh,
01:17
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
thank I mean, you went to Booker T.
01:19
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
01:20
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You write for Park City Park City's people now.
01:25
Josh Hickman
Preston Hollow people.
01:26
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You just wrote a book. Yeah. And the book was really and then you're an insane artist.
01:31
Josh Hickman
Oh, well, thank you.
01:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Something that I wanted to ask you about. So we're renovating our house there in Dallas. It's been the longest project known to man. But have you ever done any outside murals?
01:43
Josh Hickman
Oh yeah, of course.
01:44
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You have? Sure. Well, your art has a depth to it that most artists, I think I don't know if they're incapable, they fail to depict. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? I'm just eager to hear the person that you describe yourself to be.
02:11
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Let's see. My family, my dad was in the Navy. He was a military guy. Yep.
02:15
Josh Hickman
He later became a lawyer when he retired. And we moved to Dallas from South Texas, a little tiny town, Kingsville Mhmm. When I was seven. And not long after that, we moved to Highland Park where we were for a lot of my childhood until I went off to college. Lived on Livingston.
02:41
Josh Hickman
I ended up I drew and painted from the time I was very small. I still had drawings. I did when I was two and a half, three, and so and my mother was an amateur photographer and documented my entire life, as I say, whether I wanted her to or not, in thousands of photos. And I have a brother. And I ended up going to Booker T Washington Mhmm.
03:09
Josh Hickman
For art, which is probably a good thing Mhmm. Because I didn't really fit in very well. And there I studied sculpture and painting mainly. And when I went off to college, I went to several different colleges, but I ended up at UT. I kind of switched to film and I got a degree in film with emphasis on screenwriting.
03:32
Josh Hickman
I started writing more. I had written a little short story collection when I was 12. Mhmm. And I'd always liked writing and it was encouraged in high school. So then I did a myriad of jobs, everything from gosh, I worked in the film business a little bit, ended up shooting the majority of two documentaries.
03:55
Josh Hickman
I was a bartender. I was a waiter. I was a private investigator.
04:00
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I bartended. I've not been a PI. That's cool.
04:04
Josh Hickman
Worked in libraries. I did everything under the sun, did murals, did paintings. I ended up moving to in my thirties, I ended up moving to LA to join a couple of high school friends who had moved there. I ended up living in LA for fourteen years doing a variety of things again, artwork, music, some film work. And then due to circumstances and life changes, my father dying was probably the first thing.
04:36
Josh Hickman
My father got cancer and passed away. And then things started to change in my life and that culminated in my leaving LA. I thought it was time to go. Mhmm. I would I had lost my job.
04:51
Josh Hickman
I had had a breakup of a thirteen year relationship. My father died. All these things happened in quick succession. I was also getting kind of burned out as it was. I had been there.
05:03
Josh Hickman
I'd lived in Hollywood. My neighborhood was changing. They were doing a lot of development. Yeah. Houses were being knocked down and and apartment buildings were being built and traffic was getting worse, which I was already sick of.
05:18
Josh Hickman
Yeah. And and my mother was not doing well alone Mhmm. As could be expected. And so I ended up moving back. Mhmm.
05:28
Josh Hickman
And then COVID I got seriously ill right after I moved back, almost died.
05:36
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Then I wasn't aware
05:37
Josh Hickman
of this. Yeah. I did. I got very sick and spent two weeks in the hospital. And that was scary.
05:45
Josh Hickman
And then COVID hit. Mhmm. And so things didn't go very smoothly Mhmm. When I got back. And I had a relationship here.
05:57
Josh Hickman
Girlfriend who very suddenly dumped me kind of out of nowhere. Oh. And all of these things coming together, I ended up with my mother. And I knew that my mother wasn't doing well. Of course, I was back in touch with her.
06:11
Josh Hickman
I talked to her every day on the phone in LA
06:14
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, and here you did?
06:16
Josh Hickman
Probably six days a week for sure. Oh my gosh. Because that's kind of what she wanted. Yeah. So and, you know, when I moved back, I of course kept talking to her and I would see her not every day, but I would see her once or twice a week.
06:33
Josh Hickman
We lived in different parts of town. And she was downtown and I was in a cliff. And but once my life completely fell apart and I was essentially staying with her, that's when I really noticed her dementia was beginning to set in and had probably been around for years ahead of time and had been covered up by my father. Yep. And that became more obvious after he passed away.
07:01
Josh Hickman
And then it became very obvious once I spent started spending days around her. I began to see, wow, this situation is way worse than I was led to believe. Mhmm. And then it started to occur to me, oh my gosh, I think I'm gonna have to start taking care of her because both of our lives are a total wreck. Yeah.
07:23
Josh Hickman
And maybe the only way out of this is to, you know, make this kind of permanent.
07:29
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I can relate and sympathize and empathize a ton. My father died in 2022 at the 2022. And it was after his funeral where my mom's Parkinson's had reached a point where I could tell her mental acuity had really slipped. But it was after the funeral. We were in the limousine and she said, Where are we going?
08:00
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Where are you taking me? What just happened? That type of stuff. At that point I thought, Oh my God, here we go. Here we go.
08:11
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Got to buckle up for this one. And I know I told you my mom just died. She passed And earlier this it is so painful caring for a parent who has dementia, Alzheimer's, all of these diseases that are associated with severe cognitive decline.
08:37
Josh Hickman
And
08:38
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I'm sorry because I read the part of your book where you'd mentioned growing up, guess as an adult reflecting back, you saw some antisocial characteristics there. And my father was abusive to my mom and he was very wounded. He was homeless at a young age. And so it was kind of a chaotic, not a kind of, it was a very chaotic life for me. And I had to my mom encouraged me to just not talk about it, not tell people about it.
09:17
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And then again, was hard for people to believe because my dad could be and he was, he could be so kind and so loving so that
09:24
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
09:25
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You write the duality that many of these people who have these struggles contain.
09:31
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
09:33
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's interesting.
09:35
Josh Hickman
Yeah, my mother could be she's very, very difficult. As I say in the book, she's probably the most difficult person I've ever known to deal with about anything. And if you if you was very antisocial, and it's kind of one of the lessons of the book that I relearned was that, you know, you kind of have to be careful about how you treat people in life, because it can come back to haunt you in ways that you can't imagine. For some reason, my mother, that never occurred to her, you know? I mean, to her dying day that never occurred to her.
10:10
Josh Hickman
Mhmm. And why she was left completely alone by the world. Yep. Except for me. Yep.
10:15
Josh Hickman
You know? And of course there's times where you you ask yourself like, why is it just down to me? I'm the only one who will put up with this, you know? And that's the way it is. But she could too.
10:26
Josh Hickman
She could be you know superficially kind of charming if you didn't know her very well.
10:31
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Of
10:31
Josh Hickman
course. She was kind of
10:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah.
10:33
Josh Hickman
Pleasant enough, you know, maybe. But it's like the closer you were to her, then the rougher your ride was gonna be.
10:41
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
That's And
10:41
Josh Hickman
so the family that our small family which was just both of my parents were only children, so there were no uncles, aunts, cousins, nothing like that. Oh. There was only four of us. And the grandparents, of course, had died. And so just my brother and my father and my mother and myself, And if you were in that circle, it was rough.
11:04
Josh Hickman
She was very unforgiving, very hard to please. And so this pushed everyone away from
11:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
her. Mhmm.
11:11
Josh Hickman
My brother was not interested, not want to participate.
11:16
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Of course.
11:16
Josh Hickman
And I can't really blame him.
11:17
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Of course. How can you blame him?
11:18
Josh Hickman
Yeah. That in some respects, it's a smart thing to do for self preservation. Uh-huh. You say, no, thanks.
11:25
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
That's right.
11:26
Josh Hickman
And so it was me or nobody because she had no friends. And there were kind of people, this is another thing, you know, that you're not prepared for, is there were some people around her who were doing some very suspicious things, which I realized once we got together. Mhmm. And I was like, who are these people? What are they doing?
11:46
Josh Hickman
Why do they stop talking every time I approach? Uh-huh. Why do they seem like they don't like me being around? Yep. And then, yeah, some shenanigans were kind of uncovered.
12:02
Josh Hickman
And I had fraudulent adult protective services Mhmm. Charges filed against me, which was a wonderful surprise. Still don't know how that happened, who did it. Mhmm. I had to fight them.
12:18
Josh Hickman
So there were little things like that that again, kind of lessons in the book. Like, I would never that would never have occurred to me in a million years. To me, you know? And but this is what you have to prepare yourself for.
12:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Again, I'm sorry for your experiences because I'm very familiar with antisocial personality disorder and very familiar with it. And it's very sad because oftentimes, I that I hate to say it, but spewing all of that hate, that judgment, that critical space to those whom you love will come back for you.
13:03
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
13:03
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It will come back. And I do believe that, yeah, to your point, that humility, that humanity that all of us non antisocial people have, they just don't. Yeah. Right?
13:21
Josh Hickman
Yeah, it's weird.
13:22
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
They're devoid of it.
13:24
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I mean that got me to thinking of course. I mean, you know, the way I guess I went looking back was that I never got married and I never had kids. Mhmm. And part of it was probably I look back on my childhood, which certainly could have been worse.
13:41
Josh Hickman
It's not like it was totally awful or but, you know, it was difficult. Mhmm. And I think I thought, I don't want to put somebody through that. So I'm not interested, you know? And Yeah.
13:54
Josh Hickman
And then but then now these days, you know, that gives me pause to say, well, I'm gonna get old and infirmed one day. What who you know? Am I gonna wind up like my mother? You know? I hope not.
14:05
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's different, I think. I don't know how old you are, you certainly look young. And so you look like you have decades and decades in front of you. But I do invest on the side and I'm invested in Naptronic and I'm invested in Tesla for reasons that I believe these upcoming generations like you and myself, should we need that type of care, I do believe that robots will be able to assist in ways that are just not considered today. And I do believe that we'll benefit from the robots being able to which is also terrifying, to provide comforting conversations, lift, sit, feed 20 fourseven because as you I'm sure observed, I mean my mother stayed, I moved her from El Paso to Preston of the Park Cities and they don't have one on one care, so I hired visiting angels to help in the rotation of it all because it just gets to be too much.
15:18
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Especially with having four kids and our blended family and my husband and all the crazy demands and I was an only child from my parents.
15:29
Josh Hickman
Yeah. If there's a regret that I have, it certainly is. Because it was just me and you have to remember I had moved back here. The COVID hit right afterwards. I was here for almost two years, I guess, before everything.
15:43
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Before it hit? Before So 2018?
15:44
Josh Hickman
Well, no. I was I got here in 2019. But I had been here about almost two years before I ended up situation when my mother happened. And, you know, I had been away for fourteen years. I didn't have a ton of friends left here.
16:01
Josh Hickman
Still don't.
16:03
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, yeah. It's And
16:04
Josh Hickman
then there was a devastating breakup Mhmm. Which took a bunch of friends away. Mhmm. And so I was a 100% alone. My mother didn't have any friends, and I I wish I and I was very paranoid about money as you get, and particularly because she was, you know, she died at 88, so she was 86, 87, 88, around in there.
16:27
Josh Hickman
She was getting very frail, she was very thin, very small, would not use a walker or a cane or anything due to vanity. She would continue to walk and it would be and she had inner ear problems and she had vertigo and she had kinds of ear infections and And you know, it was just like a disaster waiting to happen. And so in the back of my mind was always, one of these days, she's gonna fall. She's gonna wind up in a $10,000 a
16:59
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
month Bed.
16:59
Josh Hickman
You know Yeah. Room. And what are we gonna do? Yeah. I mean, we can handle that for a little while.
17:05
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Mhmm.
17:05
Josh Hickman
But you know, we don't have endless
17:08
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
amounts And of money at
17:12
Josh Hickman
so I was very paranoid about money and I've saved money. I mean, everywhere I could and I, you know, staunchly took care of her myself. I never had anyone come and help out, really. I tried to take a two day vacation at one point, which I talked about in the book. Went terribly.
17:30
Josh Hickman
I hired somebody for two days. They weren't any good. Mhmm. Paid way too much money for them.
17:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yep.
17:36
Josh Hickman
And spent a tense two nights in a hotel room in McKinney because I could think of nothing else to do. Yep. I was so worried. And came back and thought, wow, that was a dumb idea and that didn't work very well. I'm never doing that again.
17:50
Josh Hickman
But I she wound up in hospice care and I was able to get a five day hospice respite care break very near the end. Mhmm. And that was a revelation, and that kind of made me think, wow, why didn't I do this earlier? Why wasn't this offered earlier? Why didn't I, you know, and then after she passed away, was like, you know, near the end when I was so burned out.
18:15
Josh Hickman
Yep. And I was spending twenty four hours a day, seven days a week at home.
18:19
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Can't imagine.
18:19
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I was afraid to to leave. Yep. And she was getting in such bad shape. You know, I really should have splurged and just gotten a little bit of help.
18:29
Josh Hickman
Mhmm. But my mindset at the time was just like, nope, you got to get up every day and you just got to keep going, you know.
18:37
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And it's that And I hate to say, but it's almost a Right. It's not self deprecating, but self flagellation. Yeah. Almost. Yeah.
18:46
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It didn't
18:46
Josh Hickman
seem like it at the time, but looking back, I was like, you know, it was bad enough. I didn't need to make it that bad. But your mindset can get kind of skewed when you're doing this, just the endless days and nights of doing it. And you couldn't get I got very depressed. And it's, you know, I write about this a little bit.
19:09
Josh Hickman
It's weird when you're taking care of, I mean, I'm sure many people out there know this because they've done it. But when you're taking care of somebody who's just getting more ill every day, you can kind of feel like you're going down with them.
19:19
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, yeah.
19:20
Josh Hickman
You know? You can kind of feel like, whew, I was losing weight. I I was there were points in there where I was eating one meal a day out of stress.
19:29
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yep.
19:30
Josh Hickman
And I lost about 25 pounds, and she's losing weight. Yep. You know? And like my thinking isn't going great, her thinking isn't going great. And you start to identify with them.
19:43
Josh Hickman
Mhmm. And it's creepy. It is.
19:45
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Because It is.
19:46
Josh Hickman
I mean there were moments where I thought, I don't know if I'm going to make it through this. Yep. You know?
19:50
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And my mother was towards the end because growing up, she was not that way. She was kind and yeah, she kind of the anchor of our family because my father couldn't really hold a job. He had anger, major anger problems. And so but my mother, when she was, I guess towards the end of her life as well, she would make racist comments, tell me I mean she would yell at me for not being there and I was like I was just here, but she didn't remember.
20:30
Josh Hickman
And
20:31
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
then the way I hurt my back, it was an episode of Sundowners and I was going to try and I kept saying, mom, you're being very hateful, very mean. I need to escort you to this room because I'm not going to sit here and be your punching bag. So she got up to walk without a walker, all the things. And in trying to escort her to the back room, she threw herself to the ground, I caught her, and she was trying to bite me on the way down. And I am not your size.
21:13
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
So of course, herniated L4, L5, hip now is experiencing arthritic space. I mean it's just, it takes a toll on your body. But to your point, I would have to be in a mental space or try to be I mean, you can't really help it if you're just trying to go see them and be with them. I mean, I was not doing what you were doing. I could not.
21:38
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah, no. My kids, no. It was abusive and it would depress me. And so it was just this constant cycle of emotional upheaval. And I was telling Shannon because I know I read in your responses to some of the questions that were asked, I got in the habit of assessing where I was and saying okay, I'm not able even though I'm in the news business so to speak, I'm not capable of ingesting more division, divisiveness, hate, manipulation.
22:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. Can't do it. So I'm just not going to pay attention to what is circulating in the world. I'm much more economically driven with respect to what I like to ingest. And so there is some but the political space is so divisive.
22:42
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
What is it that you primarily find yourself writing about in Park City's
22:47
Josh Hickman
people? I'm kind of the guy who, the oddball guy who does human interest stories, local businesses, local characters Mhmm. Any interesting, you know, artsy stuff Mhmm. Artists, any interesting little features or people, businesses that I come across or that they send me often. It's kind of half and half.
23:15
Josh Hickman
But yeah, that's what I like, you know, kind of portraying the small business owner or the whatever, the person who's creative or
23:23
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yep.
23:24
Josh Hickman
Something like that. It's a lot of what I do. And I wrote, I mean, writing the book was kind of therapeutic for sure. It's my seventh book. Mhmm.
23:36
Josh Hickman
And the others were novels. Mhmm. But yeah, I had to get some some space afterwards. I kind of wanted to write it right after she passed away. But I was still too emotional and kind of angry.
23:51
Josh Hickman
And so I waited over about a year and a half. And then I was able to do it. And it was, you know, like I say therapeutic, of course. But it was also because when I was going through that, you know, you can read self help books or you can read other, you know, books written by doctors on Alzheimer's. But I didn't have a book like this to read where it was somebody saying, I'm taking care of this person and our relationship is not perfect.
24:14
Josh Hickman
Mhmm. You know, it's you're you're dealing with the relationship and you're dealing with the dementia at the same time. So I just I thought it would help anybody going through a similar situation.
24:25
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Of course.
24:25
Josh Hickman
And I don't know how you felt, but when when she passed away, I was really shocked by the amount of guilt
24:36
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, yeah.
24:36
Josh Hickman
Emotion that followed it. Because it when you're in this, you think, well, you know, it's depressing but someday she's gonna pass away. It's inevitable. She's going downhill. And then I'll have my life back, you know?
24:50
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh.
24:50
Josh Hickman
And I'll be finally be free to see people and go places and eat out and, you know, do all these things that have been forbidden for me for these three plus years. Mhmm. But that's not really what happened. It was like, no, I didn't really feel like doing any of that stuff. Yeah.
25:09
Josh Hickman
I couldn't do much. I and it the guilt was kind of survivor's guilt, guess, was I felt really responsible for her dying and it was tough. Six months and then it kind of faded a little bit. And at the year mark it faded a little more. But it took about a year and a half before I thought, I'm kind of back to normal.
25:32
Josh Hickman
You know? It was weird. It was very unexpected.
25:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Well, yeah. It's almost a form it's trauma. Yeah. I mean it's traumatic to be in that type of situation for years.
25:43
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
25:43
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I mean and interestingly, I think the reason I'm so drawn to your artwork, something that I pulled from a book that I love, it has absolutely nothing to do with art. It's The Veil. It's actually a heavily spiritual book. But they write here, the author writes, unfortunately as Christians we tend to see everything in the world as being of the world. The truth is that people are complicated.
26:12
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
They are not simply bad or good. Art carries the same spiritual complexity as its creators. I believe it is spiritually immature to say any creative work that doesn't perfectly comply with our belief system should be rejected or avoided. It will be equally immature to ignore our own personal convictions and just absorb everything. But that spiritual complexity of the creators, I can feel, literally feel the complexity from each of your portraits.
26:47
Josh Hickman
Oh, thanks.
26:48
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I mean, you have and unfortunately, as you know, so many creatives and brilliant artists feel very deeply.
27:01
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Being a little crazy seems to go with it. I'm not sure why.
27:05
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Well, it's very the beauty in your creation, I believe in part is able to even exist because you have suffered. Yeah. You have suffered.
27:20
Josh Hickman
I mean, it was there was a middle period in there, I read about this in the book, but where looking back, I was turning to, you know, I didn't have a whole lot, but I had art, I wrote, and I had my dog who really kept me from going crazy. And that was about it. And during the middle period, things kind of calmed down a little and stabilized, my artistic output surprises me. It's like, I mean, I painted dozens and dozens and dozens of paintings Yep. When I had the time.
27:55
Josh Hickman
And I even kind of came up with a style that looking back was influenced by the time, which was I started doing these big paintings with little tiny details and patterns that were repeated over and over and over again. It was almost like I was knitting. Mhmm. You know, it's like I was doing this repetitious work to pass the time. Mhmm.
28:15
Josh Hickman
The long hours, especially in the winter months. And so there would be little trees or bushes or whatever and they would just be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds or pointillism that, you know.
28:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh.
28:25
Josh Hickman
And it's funny because I haven't really done many of those since. But I was certainly doing it. I was just kind of passing the time, you know, listening to music and trying to get it out. And there was a point in there where I was talking to a therapist on a call or something. And we were talking about the artwork and she said, oh, do you paint like, you know, angry, gloomy, depressing scenes to get your emotions out?
28:49
Josh Hickman
And I was like, no. I paint the total opposite. Everything is colorful
28:54
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes.
28:54
Josh Hickman
Like these pastoral landscapes and space scenes. Because I was like, no. I'm painting what I the world the way I wish it was Mhmm. Not the way it is right now. Mhmm.
29:05
Josh Hickman
You know? And color is kind of a antidepressant, think, actually in a way.
29:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It is.
29:10
Josh Hickman
That's why bright colored flowers, you know, make people feel up and alive and so forth. So, yeah. The, you know, the painting certainly helped me from losing my mind. But, yeah, thanks for your
29:30
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
No. No. It's the truth. But do you have do you have faith? Do you
29:36
Josh Hickman
I'm pray at all or not an overly religious person.
29:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Sure.
29:39
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I have a sure. I have spiritual beliefs.
29:43
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Okay. So it wouldn't offend you or whatever if I said, hey, could you paint this mural that is more inclined to depict this space in the Mediterranean of Jesus. Yeah. That okay, so that's not something because I've actually met some artists in the past who are like, no. I will not do that.
30:07
Josh Hickman
No, I know. No, no, no. That doesn't bother me.
30:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Okay.
30:11
Josh Hickman
No, not at all.
30:12
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. And for me, the fundamental joy I think that I have somehow had since I was a baby. But I have a whole lot of other stuff too. I'm also a tortured person in my own ways. But it's becoming less.
30:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
But anyways, that joy, I think if not genetically predisposed, it certainly has to do with my belief system. And it's kind of become a solid rock for me. But you know, I'm just interested to hear how you might, from a more philosophical and even a religious space, view where your mom's struggles, I mean throughout the course of your entire life, how it left you possibly feeling emptier
31:14
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
31:15
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
After it, right after a lot of her own darkness Yeah. Started to oppress you. Did you ever give thought to that?
31:28
Josh Hickman
Yeah, you know there are times where I catch myself and doing things that are you know suspiciously like her behavior even if it's no one notices but me. But there's a lot of, you know, I can be critical and I can be hard to please, you know, sometimes. And I can see the worst in people and, you know, And I have to catch myself and you know, which I do sometimes and say, you know, it's an awful lot like mom. You better watch it, you know. This isn't leading to a good place.
32:04
Josh Hickman
Yep. And, yeah, I mean some of her you know, as I say in the book, it's not like all of her influence was bad. She loved literature. She loved to read. She read all the time.
32:16
Josh Hickman
She encouraged it. You know when I was a kid she made me read Edgar Allan Poe and and I
32:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
used to love Edgar Allan
32:25
Josh Hickman
Poe. Yeah, and and you know, other writers, and and she liked photography, and she liked some movies, and so that was good. But, yeah, a lot of her, just her outlook just seemed so critical and unhappy. And really, I think kind of jealous. That's where a lot of it came from.
32:45
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
That's most antisocial people.
32:47
Josh Hickman
It's that rooted in even I can remember very well sometimes where, you know, if we would meet somebody or visit somebody or a family and they were really really seemed happy.
32:57
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. Didn't like She didn't
32:59
Josh Hickman
like them. No.
33:00
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh yeah.
33:01
Josh Hickman
She was like, oh, well they're just full of whatever or they're just pretending or I don't see why they think they're so, you know, and even as a kid, you look at me go, well, they're just like a happy, normally functioning family. Mhmm. What's the problem? Yes. You know?
33:17
Josh Hickman
And, but yeah, there was a lot of that that kind of haunted our family. But yeah, I mean, you have to separate yourself from it, you know? And unfortunately, with her, it's very difficult. But you can certainly, you know, and I think this as an artist too. I mean, I think I'm thinking this more.
33:40
Josh Hickman
You can kind of dwell too much in the darkness. Mhmm.
33:45
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I see that.
33:46
Josh Hickman
And you can wallow in your own, you know, sadness and Mhmm. Depression and so forth. And in the end, it doesn't really help anything. And I think that's where I get more and more frustrated with some artwork these days. I mean, I think my perspective is changing a little, and I think I'm able, as I get older, more and more to see, you know, when in question, it's like, what about just painting something that's beautiful?
34:17
Josh Hickman
What's wrong with that? Or painting a person's face who you know and like, you know? I mean, why not just return to those things instead of everything? I'm more, you know, more and more against political influenced art. I just I would like to start a society that's like non political artists, you know?
34:42
Josh Hickman
Mhmm. Because it just drives me crazy.
34:44
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes.
34:45
Josh Hickman
And just so much of modern art being ugly and you know, I mean wantonly so. And yeah, as I get older and kind of soften, I'm like, you know, I'm just gonna paint a nice landscape or I'm gonna make one up in my head and paint it.
35:02
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I love that.
35:03
Josh Hickman
And or I'm just gonna you know, I have a friend who makes me laugh. I'm gonna paint his face. Yeah. You know unless I got some profound inspiration to do something else. Why not just do that?
35:18
Josh Hickman
It's why not make the world more pleasant and beautiful and highlight things that are beautiful on the earth. Where's the harm in that? You know, I'm kind of leaning more that way at this age. You know, when I was 20, that's probably not what I was thinking. I was trying to be more edgy and shocking.
35:40
Josh Hickman
But these days it's that just seems so hollow and teenage and that kind of thinking.
35:46
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I understand. So I understand. I'm a classically trained pianist and singer. And so I I used to compose a lot of my own songs. And some of them were dark, very dark actually.
36:03
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And growing up for the people who have known me for a very long time, I loved Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Smashing Pumpkins. Was very and I clearly had Grant and Ellen Poe. I was very dark. Even though I was a cheerleader and all these things, my hair was pitch black. And again, I think it's something having to do with the creative mind.
36:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Even though I'm heavily analytical, that creative space for me often dwelled in the darkness. But now kind of fast forwarding and learning what I've learned about kind of the powers that be in the world, the evil and the good that a lot of people can't see, I believe it to be true. I believe that we have to actively fight to not feed that darkness.
37:04
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I mean you get, like I say, some of it's just getting older for me, but it's like you get to a point where I think more and more, I mean, I sit around and think way too much. But I think, you know, with artwork or whatever I'm doing, I think more now. Where is this all going? Uh-huh.
37:20
Josh Hickman
What is the point of what I am doing? Yep. You know, and I don't really think when I was younger I probably didn't think that way that much, but you know, in what direction is all this heading? What what will this mean after I'm dead? You know, I mean, and if it's just total self indulgent, you know, negative or ugly or I mean, how in the long run is that gonna help anybody, you know?
37:47
Josh Hickman
It might help you get your feelings out when you're 18.
37:50
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Sure.
37:50
Josh Hickman
You know, now it's like, no, let's do let's get on a little bit of a higher plane.
37:55
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Good for you.
37:55
Josh Hickman
You know? And
37:57
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
What, so where is your artwork displayed?
38:01
Josh Hickman
Oh, I don't think there's anything in any galleries at this moment. But at my house. Yeah. But no, I sell to I have pieces in shows here and there. I hopefully will have a piece in an upcoming show at the Bath House Cultural Center.
38:19
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Okay.
38:21
Josh Hickman
Their Dia de los Muertos show.
38:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, right. Oh, I think I saw that. Yeah. With the skeletons? Yeah.
38:29
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. And I thought
38:31
Josh Hickman
had a
38:31
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
piece in there. Looks
38:33
Josh Hickman
Yeah. It's a party.
38:34
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh. Yeah. It's happy skeletons.
38:37
Josh Hickman
So but I've had a piece in that show for the last couple of years. Hopefully, I get in this year too. But I sell to individual collectors and you know, people who like my stuff. Yep. I've got a new website coming out.
38:52
Josh Hickman
It's under construction That's right
38:54
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
what I was gonna ask because I searched high and low, Josh. I was like, okay, all artists have some space where there is more of an assortment, right, available to digest. But your stuff is exceptional. Yeah. Oh.
39:13
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And so for me, I was like, I'm left wanting because I couldn't Yeah. And I stalked you for a while. But I couldn't find it. So for people like me
39:23
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I'm very old fashioned. So that I've had to be talked into getting a website again. I had a website and I let it go. I'm getting a new because of the new books coming out, I'm getting a new one.
39:33
Josh Hickman
And it'll have art on it too. So it's joshwhickmanuh-huh..com.
39:38
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
When will that launch?
39:39
Josh Hickman
In the next few days probably.
39:43
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, this is perfect, Shannon. So This makes me really happy because There'll I
39:47
Josh Hickman
be more artwork
39:47
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
on it. Good, good, good. So that we can kind of circulate it.
39:50
Josh Hickman
Yeah. And I mean on social media, Facebook and on Instagram, I do post paintings here and there.
39:55
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You do. You do. But it's not It's not said, it left me wanting. Yeah. Because I thought, certainly he's got to have more.
40:04
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I mean, so you have stuff in your house?
40:06
Josh Hickman
Yeah, sure.
40:07
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Do people go look at it?
40:08
Josh Hickman
Yeah, sure. I have little
40:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
gatherings Can we go? And Because for me, okay, I literally, I was just going go get my cell phone and pull up a bunch of things that I took screenshots of because I wanted to talk about him. I feel very called to talk about what I feel when I see a lot of it. And I want to understand where you were or what headspace you were in, what inspired it, right? And not a whole ton, but if we could do that, I think it'd add just a really nice dimension to what we're talking about.
40:54
Josh Hickman
This is one of the this is the last piece I painted while I was taking care of my mother
41:01
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Your mother.
41:02
Josh Hickman
While she was still alive. And I was just doing, as I've said, like, kind of things with lots of little details that I could just kind of obsess over. And so I was trying to do sort of a waterfall
41:16
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh.
41:17
Josh Hickman
Of flowers. Yes. And this is kinda one of those ones where I when I look back because I was interrupted while I painted this, like, every ten minutes.
41:26
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. I'm sure.
41:27
Josh Hickman
So it it's amazing that I was able to that it looks so serene. Yep. Because it was not a serene But time, I can tell you anyway, that one was in a show, I think. And then Oh. I'm trying to think if there's anything in here that's worth looking at.
41:45
Josh Hickman
This is just one of my imaginary cityscapes, which I'm which I do.
41:51
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, that's beautiful.
41:52
Josh Hickman
Some of that is with translucent paint. Mhmm. So you can see through the buildings look like they're glass, and you can see through them. Sometimes I paint on wood. Sometimes I paint on canvas or board.
42:04
Josh Hickman
This is a version of Arnold Bach's Isle of the Dead, which he And painted four I kinda did my own version
42:12
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Mhmm.
42:13
Josh Hickman
Which I never fully finished, but I actually kinda like it the way it is, so I just left it.
42:19
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I I enjoy it. Just like that as well.
42:23
Josh Hickman
Yeah. And then this one that you were asking about. Yeah. So these two are the first two paintings I did when I returned to painting, which was ten years ago. So these were done in 2015.
42:39
Josh Hickman
And I hadn't really painted that regularly for a while, and I kinda got back into it, and I've been into it ever since. And so I did I wanted to do two landscapes, sort of imaginary ones. Mhmm. And so the first one is structures. Mhmm.
42:55
Josh Hickman
Some of them are real. I tried to make them all interesting, but some of them are real. Some of them are things that aren't buildings but look like buildings. Mhmm. And then some are kind of fake buildings taken from movie sets or whatever.
43:08
Josh Hickman
So yeah. And I memories, you know, dreams, stuff like that. And so I had thought of that building from El Paso.
43:16
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh.
43:16
Josh Hickman
And I was to the point where I was like, did that building really exist? Uh-huh. I remember this with, you know, my brother learning to so that's how I remembered it. Oh. And then once after I painted that, I said, well, there is the Internet.
43:29
Josh Hickman
Yes. I can go look it up. So I looked it up, lo and behold, it's still there, and this is what it looks like. It's a synagogue in El Paso from my childhood.
43:38
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I remember it.
43:39
Josh Hickman
And I think they built it in the sixties Mhmm. Or fifties, and it's still I visited it about a year and a half ago.
43:46
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. It still exists.
43:47
Josh Hickman
Still looks exactly the same. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And I was standing in the parking lot thinking this this is it.
43:52
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I have been there a few times.
43:54
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I went with my brother.
43:56
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yep.
43:56
Josh Hickman
And we were like, yeah, this is it. So then some of these, like, this is a cold virus. So it's not a building, but it kinda made it look like a building.
44:06
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And I love the floating effect of Yeah. The items.
44:11
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I These are called World Without Shadows one and two because I got to the point where I kind of liked the idea of not making them so literal because I started to think, well, where are the shadows gonna go on all these? Because the sun's over there, so they have to they have to come this way. And so I just ignored it. I said, no.
44:28
Josh Hickman
We're not gonna have any shadows at all.
44:30
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I like it.
44:31
Josh Hickman
And then this is the same concept, but it was with plants. So some of these are real plants, some of these are things that look like plants, and some of them are not, or neither one, really. So the baobab tree, these two are nuclear explosions. We have fungus that look like plants. We have animals that look like plants, a sea cucumber.
44:57
Josh Hickman
This is from a movie. That creature is from a movie. That's an octopus pretending to be a crab.
45:04
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, my goodness.
45:05
Josh Hickman
So, it was just kind of, this was more organic living things, and the other one was more buildings.
45:11
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And I love them. Then Next to each other.
45:15
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I've always kept them next to each other, and Yep. No one's ever bought them. They've they've They're beautiful. They've tried, but they haven't.
45:25
Josh Hickman
And then so this is more recent. This is one of my recent paintings. After my mother passed away, I was able to go to Italy to visit a friend of mine. I had never been to Europe, period Wow. Ever in my life.
45:38
Josh Hickman
I haven't traveled much, which is kinda sad. So I had a friend who lived there, still lives there, and I, on a whim, went and visited her. So this is of this is in Rome, and this is the the ruins of the Roman senate down here, and this Basilica that's next to it, which is later, of course. And, anyway, so that was just one of my, you know, little snapshot memories of Rome, and it it took a lot of work.
46:07
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I love this. It's remarkable, and immediately when I walked into your apartment studio here, I thought, okay, that's Rome. Yeah. And but it's beautiful and colorful.
46:21
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Yeah. I always kinda, you know, I lean towards the colors.
46:25
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Me too. And I do too.
46:27
Josh Hickman
And sometimes they're almost kinda randomly chosen. Like, I'll like, this wasn't really pink. You know? Mhmm. I just just the way it went.
46:35
Josh Hickman
Sure. It was kind of duller than that, but it's just sort of the way it went. Or I'll exaggerate some of the yellows in the reds.
46:42
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. And that's what I love.
46:44
Josh Hickman
Brighter.
46:44
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And okay. So this is really, really something special.
46:48
Josh Hickman
Thank you.
46:49
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And something that I'd like to talk to you more about along the perimeter of my home. Yeah. And so these portraits Yes.
46:56
Josh Hickman
These are a few portraits. This is a quick self self portrait I did. Uh-huh. This is a portrait of Ernie Kovacs who was a TV comedian in the fifties. Yep.
47:05
Josh Hickman
Passed away in 1962. And this is a kind of a grotesque of another comedian, George Jessel. Mhmm. Which I was just doing kind of down and out type pictures Yeah. And lots of color.
47:21
Josh Hickman
And, like, with this one, I tried to be doing an experimental thing, trying to go from one color to another Mhmm. As I went around.
47:28
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. This is special.
47:30
Josh Hickman
This is a sun and moon thing I did. Mhmm. And another portrait of a friend of mine.
47:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I love it. Oh my gosh. I know. That's funny. Isn't it remarkable?
47:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Look at this. I mean, it the way it pops out.
47:45
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I was doing I did this series, which you've seen some of them, where I was doing these color portraits and using kind of bright colors also opposite, you know, a Yes. Color wheel. So he's kind of yellowy, goldy, and the background is purple. I got another one green and red.
47:59
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I can't wait
48:00
Josh Hickman
to blue and orange.
48:01
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
See, this is what I right? I mean, Shannon, think of this. Right? As kind of the Right. You don't have to sell Right?
48:09
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's so special.
48:11
Josh Hickman
But then I I like, I can roll out a couple of these, and it just works on paper, but that's another Italy scene from Cortona that I just did kinda these are a little, you know, on paper. They're a bit more casual, but
48:23
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
What is your ethnicity?
48:25
Josh Hickman
My family, I guess, is from is from Great Britain, mainly.
48:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Got you.
48:33
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
48:33
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Got you.
48:35
Josh Hickman
On both sides. Mother was both. Yeah. My mother's Canadian, and then her family before then, of course, was like Ireland Uh-huh. England.
48:42
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Got you.
48:43
Josh Hickman
And my dad's side were miners who came over to mine in the copper mines
48:47
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Mhmm.
48:48
Josh Hickman
In New Mexico from Cornwall in Wales. Oh. They were mine coal miners there.
48:53
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
See, and it's so interesting because the way you use color, it reminds me so much of Spanish Yeah. Influence
49:01
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
49:01
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
That is very near and dear to my heart. And so I'm like, this reminds me of, like a Salvador Dali. Yeah. Right? This kind right?
49:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And then this kind of floating I mean, I'm it's so beautiful.
49:15
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I love Dali. I'm a big Dali fan.
49:18
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
He's my favorite. He's my favorite artist.
49:21
Josh Hickman
Yeah. You see some of the his, you know, his bigger pieces. Yep. Take a close look at them and
49:27
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I know.
49:27
Josh Hickman
The painting is mind blowing.
49:28
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It is mind blowing.
49:29
Josh Hickman
You forget how good he was. Yes. And then you see those, you're like, wow.
49:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Uh-huh.
49:32
Josh Hickman
Amazing. Yeah. But these are just a variety of stuff. This was taken from dreams that I had. These are some abstracts.
49:43
Josh Hickman
And then this is just another made up cityscape that I imagined.
49:47
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I love this.
49:48
Josh Hickman
And then this was a more I was doing a I kinda did a series with animals. Uh-huh. I was gonna make them weirder animals, but I ended up doing a tiger, which is green, and this rhino, which is blue. And Oh, fuck. Yeah.
50:06
Josh Hickman
I like that. I think that one turned out pretty well.
50:08
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, my goodness. I might have to now pull from this because Yeah. I'm thinking of the animals on the ranch, Shannon.
50:16
Josh Hickman
And this is yeah. Oh, that's yeah. That's a house. I kinda turned it into a haunted house kind of working thing. But it was it's based on a real house that is in California.
50:26
Josh Hickman
It's North Of LA. I'm trying to think of what town it's in. Newhall.
50:31
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Okay. I've never been to Newhall.
50:33
Josh Hickman
And then this is piece that I just finished, which just got into the the Bathurst.
50:37
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Slip. That's right.
50:38
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Yeah.
50:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's awesome. Gonna be
50:40
Josh Hickman
in a show in a couple of weeks.
50:42
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's beautiful.
50:44
Josh Hickman
Which is fun. They're they're fun receptions to go to. They've
50:48
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
been Yes.
50:49
Josh Hickman
Oh, yeah. Attend attended. So I've got a few in here. These are just sketches of comedians' faces.
50:57
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, my goodness. Wow. Your sketching is really remarkable.
51:02
Josh Hickman
And just kinda done over a period of time.
51:10
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
This is neat.
51:12
Josh Hickman
And then this is another kind of fantasy Mhmm. Landscape. Mhmm. And this is kind of a winter to spring kind of an idea Uh-huh. That we came up with, changing of the seasons.
51:26
Josh Hickman
Gosh. And this is just a little kinda skyscape
51:30
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I know.
51:30
Josh Hickman
I did. It was also I remember painting this because it was so frustrating because it was during that period, my mother would interrupt me
51:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, sorry.
51:41
Josh Hickman
But, yeah, I kinda like the way that turned out. Was one I actually kinda did for her. Aw. They're forget me nots.
51:52
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I know. I gave my dad a bouquet of those when he was in the hospital when I was really little. And they they were they were faux ones
52:01
Josh Hickman
Uh-huh.
52:02
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
But these exact flowers. Oh my gosh. So
52:08
Josh Hickman
and then let's see. I got a couple more in my bedroom. Yes.
52:11
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
There's some
52:11
Josh Hickman
little ones in here. Another abstract over there.
52:17
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Shannon, look at this. It's just I know. I know. I know. Yes.
52:25
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Like, look at that. On this wooden
52:31
Josh Hickman
Yeah. That's a that's a friend of mine who he's a ironically, he's a carpenter and woodworker. And
52:40
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
This is amazing.
52:42
Josh Hickman
And I paint I paint on wood maybe a third of the time, and canvas two thirds of the time. So I just started I had wood, so I started painting him. And I was gonna paint over the wood grain, and then I thought, well, he's a carpenter. Why not just leave the wood grain and and do Oh, gosh. You know, do a clear coat over it, and I left the trees in the background.
53:05
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I love this. Thanks. Imagine animals at the ranch painted on this as the can right? Amazing. I ugh.
53:21
Josh Hickman
Yeah. It's And you've seen that one.
53:23
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. Oh my gosh. Descriptive words to say. I know. It's so good.
53:29
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's exceptional. The small strokes.
53:34
Josh Hickman
Yeah. It's a friend of mine. Have a picture of him standing next to it making that exact face. It's exactly what he looks like. He's a high school buddy of mine.
53:44
Josh Hickman
He's kind of a goofball.
53:45
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah.
53:45
Josh Hickman
And we've kept in touch over all these years. And so I always thought of him laughing. So I took a bunch of pictures of him at a dinner table cracking up, and then I turned those into that. And these are a couple of musicians over here, and then this is kind of like almost the nighttime version of the daytime one in the next room. Again, it's just kind of made up.
54:12
Josh Hickman
Using translucent paint again on this, you can kind of see through the buildings.
54:16
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I know.
54:17
Josh Hickman
I had got some new paints that turned out to be translucent, and so I thought, well, let's see if we can do some layering, you know.
54:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Wow. Oh, my goodness. And it keeps going.
54:29
Josh Hickman
Yeah. I mean, I
54:30
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
don't know if there's anything. Oh, I do. Can I see this one up here?
54:33
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Sure.
54:34
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Look, Shannon.
54:36
Josh Hickman
So I started yeah. I started this technique. I haven't done it recently, but of reverse painting on glass. Uh-huh. So you paint on the back.
54:44
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh. So there's there's no paint there. It's on
54:47
Josh Hickman
the back. And you paint them in reverse. So you start with the details, and then you work your way back in space to the background. The background's the last thing you do instead instead of it being the first thing you do. And this was the first one I ever tried with that technique.
55:03
Josh Hickman
And then there's another one that's done the same way. But it makes the colors really bright because there's no canvas. You know? It's it's all color. So I still do those every once in a while.
55:14
Josh Hickman
I haven't done one recently. That's another one.
55:16
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Who is this?
55:17
Josh Hickman
This is an actor, Juan Cheney Junior. He played the wolf man.
55:21
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. I knew it. Yeah. With Budd Abbott and Lucas Stella?
55:24
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Yeah.
55:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh my gosh. That's why I was like, tell me that this is the that is exactly. Okay. I actually could have placed him.
55:30
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
55:30
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Strange.
55:32
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
55:33
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And I love do you know who but I have another Castello are? Okay. Yeah. They're they're comedians. Yeah.
55:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
They're older comedians.
55:40
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Like kind of
55:41
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Hilarious. Like
55:42
Josh Hickman
character actors with craggy faces. Yeah. I do a bunch of those. That's him there too later in life. Oh.
55:49
Josh Hickman
Yeah. It's him in Gotcha. Twenty years later, you know.
55:53
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I don't know what it is about your portrait work that is so dimensional, layered, purposeful, and it's deep. Yeah. It's almost like you can feel their emotions. And, I mean, right? You know them or so.
56:15
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. Exactly. You yes. It's almost as if you're sitting there having a glass of wine with them.
56:22
Josh Hickman
Yeah. And it's for some reason, instead of painting I mean, I could do flesh tones, but I like the monochromatic stuff.
56:29
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I do too.
56:30
Josh Hickman
It's weird. It kind of casts them in a certain light and adds a certain personality to it, instead of trying to go, okay. Well, I'm trying to make it look as Uh-huh. Exactly like
56:40
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes.
56:40
Josh Hickman
Their photograph as I possibly can. I didn't really see what the point of that was.
56:46
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, my goodness. Shannon, I'm thrilled. Look at like, I mean, this You painted this.
56:54
Josh Hickman
Yeah. Little tiny brushes.
57:01
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I know. I know. It's just
57:04
Josh Hickman
Especially when you have time on your hands, like I
57:07
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
But I mean this
57:08
Josh Hickman
I did
57:08
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
for so long. Can't stop with I mean, it's they're I think they're some of the most impressive portraits I've ever seen in my life.
57:21
Josh Hickman
Oh, well, you.
57:22
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Well, thank you for
57:23
Josh Hickman
Yeah.
57:24
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Allowing us to come Of course. To this remarkable space. I'm grateful
57:31
Josh Hickman
Oh, to you know what? Let me give you a book. My books came in.
57:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh, they did. Yeah. You have to sign it, please. Okay. Good.
57:39
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
You got a pen. We have to take a picture together with this. Thank you so much. Yeah. This is so special.
57:53
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
This Shannon?
57:54
Josh Hickman
Oh, yeah. I didn't go into
57:55
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
this Yeah. Yeah. If we can. Only because this actually is a little reminiscent of some artwork that I grabbed in Colombia. Mhmm.
58:05
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
What where is this from?
58:06
Josh Hickman
These both are from Venice. That was Rome, and this is Venice. This is the Piazza San Marco Uh-huh. Saint Mark's
58:14
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yep.
58:14
Josh Hickman
Square with the pigeons. Mhmm. There were people in there, but I cut them out because I didn't want Uh-huh. A And so, that's Venice on the Saint Mark's Square, and then this is just wandering around Venice as night was falling. Mhmm.
58:30
Josh Hickman
I mean, I was very impressed with Venice.
58:32
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yes. Oh, it's It just kind of blew my mind.
58:34
Josh Hickman
I was
58:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It is.
58:35
Josh Hickman
I was like, what is this crazy crazy place? Yep. And just going down those narrow streets.
58:42
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yellowstone streets.
58:43
Josh Hickman
Yeah. It was just so cool. So that's just kind of a nighttime shot.
58:48
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Love that. Yeah. These are certainly the types, right, that I'm really wanting in my backyard.
58:59
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I'll just have to figure out the exact locations. My goodness. So we're gonna be working a lot together. I'm like from beside the portraits and then the artwork in the back. I mean, it's beautiful, isn't it?
59:14
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Oh my gosh. Shannon. Thanks. Oh my god.
59:17
Josh Hickman
Well, I I work alone in, you know, obscurity a lot.
59:22
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Yeah. Well then It's nice
59:24
Josh Hickman
to have somebody appreciate it.
59:26
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
Of course. Of course. I mean, you're you're exceptionally talented.
59:31
Josh Hickman
And thank you.
59:31
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
And I'm grateful to know you. Yeah. So thank you, Josh.
59:34
Josh Hickman
Thank you.
59:35
Sarah Zubiate Bennett
I'm excited, Shannon. This is good.
featuring our host.
SARAH ZUBIATE BENNETT
Venture Philanthropist, Host and Executive Producer of Let’s Talk Local, bold leader driving growth in private and social sectors.
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