February 2001
Vicky Perry
www.vickyperry.com
Vicky@vickyperry.com
The issues of chance and control are addressed in my paintings. Also, a bringing together of supposed opposites is an implicit concern. The works combine representational and abstract painting by juxtaposing them on a single support.
These experiments advance reconciliation between seemingly opposite types of paint thinking: abstraction vs. representation. For me, these ways of painting are allies that co-exist and lend a healthy vibrant glow to each other in proximity. As the eye crosses a border from realism to abstraction, the decoding rules change. Combining styles is a postmodernist (though not anti-modernist) tactic.
The working methods are completely different in each area. Representational areas are traditionally rendered in oil paint and abstract areas are poured or sprinkled acrylic paint. The representational areas, while deliberate and patiently produced, contain a willful sensuousness that only oil paint can impart. Pouring paint can only be a wild and uncontrollable process.
A dialog takes place between action painting and realism. The realistic areas reveal their imagery when seen from a conventional viewing distance; by moving up close to the works, the action painting opens up its store of detail. From a further distance, the relationship between the abstract area and the represented subject is seen; the regions resonate.
It is my purpose to create an aesthetic experience that does not require textual support. I wish to further the tolerance within the art world of the sensory; this is implicit in my distancing from text. The work displays a concern for craft and disavowal of irony or appropriation. It has been said that the most subversive act a artist can do in this day is create a classically, professionally competent rendering through paint.
