(Still Life With Fish)

Peter Paone

A very early Abstract Expressionist work done while the Philadelphia-based artist was still in high school. In a note sent to the gallery upon reaching out to him about the painting, Paone wrote:

I was 17 at the time and Octavia [Locke] often bought work off the easel, but I did keep written records even at that time. I looked it up and I sold it for $11.00 which was a good sum of money for me in '54. I had an after school job at a fruit stand for $10.00 a week and always put any art sales towards buying art supplies and that day I must have been like a kid in a candy shop; now it costs me that in gas to get to one. Three years later I went to Paris for the first time and spent an afternoon with Georges Braque in his studio.

Octavia Waldo Locke was a Philadelphia- and California-based writer, artist, educator, and collector. After studying painting, ceramics, and enamel arts at the Tyler School of Fine Art and the American Academy in Rome, she taught for several years in Washington D.C. She would also become a writer, authoring several short stories, esssays, and the book "A Cup of the Sun" in 1961.