Art
#paintings #painting #Pat Perry #publicart #streetart
August 13, 2024
Grace Ebert
“Call on Me” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 66 x 78 inches. All images © Pat Perry, distributed with permission
Mostly greatthe title of Pat Perry's latest work, is multifaceted. The phrase invokes both the exceptional and the bleak, which the Detroit-based artist evokes as he captures singular moments on canvas.
On view through October 13 at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Mostly great focuses on “behind-the-scenes America,” glimpses into small-town life and family gatherings. Two women pose on wooden stands with an array of cakes and pies in “Call on Me,” while “Memorial Van” displays four photos on the dashboard of a damaged vehicle. Ripe with nostalgia, the paintings evoke candid photographs and capture a moment in time, one that has inevitably passed.
Perry decided on the idea for the series while reading an architecture book that described the soothing and pleasing human reaction to perfect and harmonious design in response to the encounter of order in the midst of a chaotic world. “Paintings can work similarly,” he noted, “somehow tempering the parts of the experience that are particularly terrifying to confront.” He came across the passage around the same time a childhood friend's mother died, a time of grief that reminded him of the hopeful potential of making art. He added:
As paintings, those terrifying parts are quiet. Somehow they are transformed into something strangely serene. Painting is an act of venturing into your own mental wilderness, facing a monster you know will devour you, and even if you can't defeat it, taking it into account by doing something productive and creative.
In addition to smaller works on canvas, Perry recently completed a pair of murals in Buffalo and Knoxville. Evoking expansive collages of photographs, drawings and paintings, both refer to how memories can be collected, grouped and organized. Find more of the artist's work on his website and Instagram.
“Erie County Witness Tree Map,” commissioned by the Buffalo AKG Museum
Detail “Call on Me” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 66 x 78 inches
Detail of “Erie County Witness Tree Map”
“Visitors” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 42 x 55 inches
Mural commissioned by Dogwood Arts of Knoxville, Tennessee
“Memorial Van” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 62 x 78 inches
Detail “Memorial Van” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 62 x 78 inches
“Together Garden” (2023), acrylic on panel, 33 x 49 inches
#paintings #painting #Pat Perry #publicart #streetart
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