I received this from one of Joe's mates this morning
... I thought I'd post it to the list as my way of
"lighting a candle" for him ... what a guy!

Ah,

from the flurry of emails I have received, it seems
Joe's been hiding
his light under a bushell.

Pretty much all of you know he makes a living as a
house painter and
that he has myeloma.

Some of you know he is a talented painter who creates
large-scale
works that explore a lot of surface textures and that
he integrates
these explorations into his house painting. Not your
average house
painter.

Some of you know he is a poet.

Some of you know he was a bit of a runner, but it's
clear from the
recent email responses that a lot of you only know
some parts of him,
so I'll wax a bit lyrical about Joe and how complex
and talented he
is.

A Bit of  Runner. Joe was an ultramarathon runner over
the last 35-40
odd years, which is how we got to know Joe - he was
running marathons
with my brother Phil and then Phil became part of
Joe's support crew
on ultra runs like Perth to Albany, and Joe came home
to our family
and he's been a part of us ever since. I ran with Phil
and Joe a bit
in the 70s on training runs and it was always a lot of
fun, although
VERY hard yakka running with Joe Record...

I'm not an authority on his running  history - his
sister Clare's
been there for him always - so if I get bits wrong
forgive me, but
from memory, he's done the Sydney to Melbourne
marathon a couple of
times, Perth to Albany (WA), Perth to Geraldton (WA),
the New York
Marathon a couple of times, run across America, run in
Asia in a Sri
Chinmoy marathon, ultramarathons at Crystal City and
more. I think
the 6 Day race in La Rochelle was one of his
highlights. Not sure of
his exact placing, but I know he was a trophy winner.
Will check with
Clare.

House Painter, Painter, Poet. Not your ordinary house
painter.
Explores texture and surfaces, knows more about
pigments and
limewashes and finishes than anyone has any right to,
and is always
exploring and developing.

Here's the website I built for him some years back:
http://www.joewurkz.com/

We never did finish the site, somehow he was always
too busy to add
new works or write the text for his "Other Stuff" and
"Links" pages.

1. House Painting: Some commercial jobs are on view in
the Gallery
section. There's a picture of him in the Brian's Wall
Gallery

2. Paintings: You can see some of his paintings (in
his UV-reactive
paint phase) (you can see Joe himself standing in the
opening view)
in the Virtual Reality section - Check out "Joe's
Room". This was the
image I printed out for his hospital room.

 .... contd. in part 2