Art Sync: Journeyed Surface

PE: By late afternoon a shadow slices my mountain view in half. (Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick from the other side of this same mountain, and what he saw was his whale––or so the story goes.)

I am not a writer, but I read a ton of books. I admire how writers craft fiction, what is observed from life and what is left out, and how those chosen details mold the mood of the story. Recently, I read a memorable novel called North Woods by Daniel Mason. It brings touches of marvelous magic realism to scientific facts. The protagonist is the Berkshires, a piece of land in my backyard: people, animals, insects, and plants come and go over the span of decades, working up finally to the present. I want to paint narrative landscape as if seen from both sides of a frame of film and capture the larger story that continues into the past and present.

I used to say that I tortured a painting to the finish. Now I have come to embrace the way I make a painting as a bridge to intimacy and trust with the image.

PE: Sassetta’s use of exaggerated storytelling elements, and medieval patterning mixed with observational details resonates with my approach of combining flatness and depth in the same picture plane.

EJ: Do you prefer working with photos or working from life? Have you ever made abstract paintings or work that doesn’t tell a story?

PE: I am now using photos as a first step in designing a landscape painting. Printing out a bunch of pictures, I piece them together into a dizzy shifting combo of foreground and background to simulate walking in the woods. I'll often next make a tonal drawing that rearranges shape and detail into an emotional, subjective, and stage-like space. But because I start layering, scraping, and moving everything around again, I am never obedient to the original drawing.  

EJ: Swamp Lafitte uses hyper-saturated almost cartoon-like color, a big departure from the warm beige ground based of twelfth-century Chinese painting that you described in the John Thornton video, For the Love of Paint. How or why did chroma become so much brighter and bolder in this piece?

PE: My daughter and her family live in New Orleans, and we visit often. Responding to the different mood and atmosphere there, I shifted to brighter, more saturated colors to capture the vibrant and sometimes surreal quality of the swamp environment. This departure from a more muted, traditional palette delivers dynamic, vivid impact that experiments with how color can alter perception and convey an exaggerated sense of place.

EJ: I would group together Queen Anne’s Lace, Lilies and Ladybugs, Pods del Parto, Green River, Wahconah Falls, Bayou Sauvage, and Interior Life for balancing color with imbedded, textural design.

EJ: A quieter palette, such as in Gloaming and Northwoods, feels more like Northern Renaissance. Does your palette fall in line with mood, seasons, and/or where you travel? Is layering slow-reveal patterns into the work the natural next step after thinking so many years about layering texture? Do you draw patterns from source materials?

PE: My palette does indeed often reflect mood, seasons, and the environments where I’m working. For pieces like Gloaming and Northwoods, the quieter, more subdued palette captures the specific atmospheric qualities of the Berkshires, a big contrast with Swamp Lafitte's response to Southern landscape. When I'm traveling, I make prints of various collected plants from the area. I often start with collaging these print cut-outs on a beginning canvas before working over with oil colors. Collaging, printing, and stenciling patterns have become a natural progression in my work, adding a visual complexity that enhances the emotional and tactile qualities I so enjoy building.

EJ: Winter Crows feels like a compromise between bright and subdued color. I especially like color embedded in or below snow: I can breathe in the fresh cold air, and surprisingly, the painting does include an expansive view. Is there a story behind joining “a murder of crows," prismatic, fresh snow, and timeworn, fresco-like surfaces?

PE: Winter Crows does indeed strike a balance between bright and subdued colors, aiming to capture the stark, invigorating essence of winter. The "murder of crows" adds a dynamic element to the scene, while the prismatic snow and textured surfaces contribute to a sense of depth and history. Crows represent life and movement against the stillness of the snow, a dead tree and broken fence, as the fresco-like surfaces suggest historical depth, almost as if the scene has been etched into time. The narrative comes through reading these elements together as you reflect both on the harshness and beauty of a winter landscape.

–– Elizabeth Johnson
(elizabethjohnsonart.com)

edited by Matthew Crain
(@sarcastapics)

September 2024

Perky Edgerton: Lost In The Woods
Oct 4 - Nov 9, 2024

Opening Reception:
Saturday, Oct 5, 1-4pm
Artist Talk with Perky Edgerton (POST event): Saturday, Oct 19 @ 2pm

Perky Edgerton received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Boston University and her Masters of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art. She taught in the University of Pennsylvania for several years, retiring in 2019. She now lives in the northern Berkshire of western Massachusetts. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, notably, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, the Walter Murch Scholarship to Skowhegan, and the Skowhegan Drawing Purchase Prize. Edgerton has been working in painting and drawing for nearly 50 years. She has exhibited her works through numerous one person and group exhibition throughout the United States. Edgerton has traveled extensively, circumnavigating the globe on the Semester at Sea program, a year living in Sri Lanka, two years in Italy, and three separate years living in Mexico. In addition to her work in painting, Perky Edgerton is also the illustrator of two books of children’s fiction, published by Duttons Childrens Division of Penguin/Puttnam, entitled “Pipiolo and The Roof Dogs” and “Bravo, Tavo”. This is Edgerton's fourth solo exhibition with Gross McCleaf Gallery, by which she is represented.