Art of Richard D. Perry: September 2012

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Old World New World

Diptych Plus Two (1972)

During the late 1980s and much of the 1990s, I took an extended break from painting in order to devote my energies to traveling in and writing about Mexico. In addition to writing, I created a large number of architectural drawings of Mexican colonial monuments to illustrate a series of guide books that I subsequently published.

Old World, New World (2002)

After 2000 I returned to painting, initially focusing on themes and compositional elements from earlier work, but from a new perspective. This composition and a series of related prints have a long gestation period. They follow from a review of divided canvases (diptychs and triptychs) I painted in the 1970's, in particular the painting Diptych Plus Two from 1972. I also made use of the directional lines that I had introduced in my "In the Beginning" group of paintings from the early 1980s.

Prints

Then in 2003 and 2004 I completed a series of hand tinted monoprints exploring motifs from the 2002 painting shown above.

This Way Across (2003)

That Way Over (2004)

Half Way Along (2004)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Other Horizons

Mesa Moonscape (197

This is a group of canvases from the late 1970s in which I rang some changes on my earlier Horizon paintings with the addition of various landscape forms, human figures and other incidental objects, some based on images of real world incidents—an element that came to be the focal point of my work after 2000.

Mojave Incident (197

Delta Highway (197

Arco Circle (1977)

Little Missouri River Criss-Cross (1978)

Thursday, September 13, 2012

"In the Beginning"

In the Beginning (1984)

In the mid 80's, I continued to explore the tension between the structured and the spontaneous in a group of divided canvases in which I contrasted gestural blobs, splashes, and flowing color washes against a variety of geometrical and grid patterns and directional lines.

Several employed imagery with a primordial flavor, derived from ocean flora and fauna.

Ultramarine (1984)

Along the Shore

The Day After (1984)

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Anacapa paintings

Anacapa is the smallest of the Santa Barbara Channel islands in southern California, but the closest to the mainland. The Chumash Indian name of the island signifies mirage, a reference to the varying appearance—and disappearance—of the island depending on the offshore atmospheric conditions.

Drawing on my earlier work, I employed modified grids and horizon style formats—sometimes asymmetrical or askew—as basic structures underlying the passages of stained and scumbled paint.

The Anacapa Lines: January 1969 (1982)

This large, rather dark painting—which inspired the rest of the series—refers to the notorious oil spill that took place in the Santa Barbara channel in January 1969. The superimposed geometrical forms are related to the oil rigs that line the channel.
The use of passages of paint bleeding into one another simulates the oil and water mix.

Anacapa Baroque 1982/3

In these paintings, created in 1982 and 1983, I attempted to relate the constant but mercurial presence of Anacapa, actually a string of rocky islands, to the changing moods and aspects of the Channel in a variety of formats, some more serious than others, even with whimsical titles!

Anacapa Blues 1982/3

Anacapa Kreme 1982/3

Anacapa Moon 1982/3

Anacapa Postcard 1982/3

Anacapa Storm 1982/3

Anacapa Split 1982/3

Anacapa Triptych 1982/3

Lines & Tracks

Lines and Tracks 1978

In the late 1970's and into the early 1980's I became interested in images of receding landscapes—deserts, plains and other open sites scarred or redefined by manmade marks or objects—dramatized by the use of odd angles and unusual environmental effects.

As in my earlier work, I sought to explore, in the treatment of paint, the tension between the natural and the artificial, the accidental and the intentional, the structured and the spontaneous.