“The one thing I don’t want a painting to look like when it’s
finished is finished.”
Peri Schwartz
For the American artist Peri Schwartz whose oeuvre encompasses
painting, drawing and printmaking her studio is her sanctuary.
As she told the New York Times “One of
the things that has always been important to me is that I’m really alone when
I’m painting. They make jokes in my family that “nobody’s allowed to call Peri
in her studio.” When I was looking for space, I did look at some of the
community spaces that have been provided for artists. I realized I
wouldn’t be happy in that situation. I just didn’t want someone coming by
asking to borrow linseed oil or asking what I thought of their paintings. I
didn’t want to think about anyone’s work but my own.”
Such is Schwartz’s involvement with her studio that the paraphernalia
of her working life features as the subject of her paintings, drawings and
prints. Her semi-abstract renderings of the still lifes she creates from the tools
and supplies of her trade have been described by the Huffington
Post’s John Seed to “have the
expressive vitality of perfectly executed chamber music.”
And about which Schwartz told The
Painting Perceptions Blog’s Cody Upton “I want to make these
exquisite, organized things that sit on the edge of abstraction. My paintings
are realistic—you do get a sense of space—but they are also abstract… I want it
to be an open question. Things shouldn’t look like they’re exactly where
they’re supposed to be. The composition shouldn’t feel stagnant.”
Schwartz archives this through the inclusion of an often visible
grid within her works.
As she has explained “In art school, the practice of looking
at a painting and dividing it into a grid was introduced as a compositional
device. Later, when I was doing self-portraits, I had to get my body in the
same position every day. I was working from life, in front of a mirror, and I
started to mark lines on the wall behind me so that I would know where to
position my head and arm. Soon I included the lines in the painting. They
became part of the composition.”
A dedicated fan of small ensemble classical music, Schwartz translates
the experience of the musician’s interaction into her own work.
As she says “I go to
concerts frequently and aside from getting emotionally involved in the music, I
like to watch how the musicians communicate with each other. When I am back at
the studio, the relationships between my still life objects remind me of the
communication I observed between the musicians.”
Schwartz’s current exhibition Constructing From Life is
on show at the Richmond, Virginia’s Page Bond Gallery until the 26th
of March.
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