James R. Perry
Painters are constantly looking forward to and thinking about the next painting: once again, the possibility of making something out of nothing. For me, the act of painting is always a combination of the Sisyphean boulder and a snowball gaining volume as it rolls downhill.
This exhibition allows me to take a look back at what I was doing with that possibility thirty years ago. Three decades on, I can’t pretend to know exactly what I was thinking in the studio (my somewhat cryptic notes to myself refer to “Sleepwalker” as a duality, “Cycle” as formation or entropy, and “Smoke” as ephemera). But it was a significant moment: I was returning to painting after five years of drawing, largely in pastels. With the pastels, I would work each drawing over and over, in a slow process of distillation. That slow, considered process carried over into the paintings, which were composed of many, many layers of transparent oil glazes. I had to remain open to spontaneity as each new layer completely transformed the ones beneath. As I revisit this work, I travel even farther back – all the way back -- to a little boy drawing elm trees; from the beginning, all the work has had a component of landscape. And I can also see that these paintings, the pastels that preceded them, those elm trees and my current paintings all flow from a common source: my lifelong desire to make visible the unsayable.
Resume
Education: B.S. Art 1972. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
Specialist Printmaking Group. 1973
Brighton College of Art
Brighton, England
M.A. Painting and Printmaking 1976
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
M.F.A. Painting 1978
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
Exhibitions: 6/78 Wisconsin Biennale
Madison Art Center
Madison, Wisconsin
10/78 Wisconsin Directions II
Milwaukee Art Center
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
6/79 Self Portrait Invitational
Madison Art Center
Madison, Wisconsin
7/79 New Talent / New Visions
Zolla / Lieberman Gallery
Chicago, Illinois
1/80 One Person Show
Zolla / Lieberman Gallery
Chicago, Illinois
6/80 National Painting and Sculpture Invitational
Indianapolis Art Museum
Indianapolis, Indiana
9/80 Inauguration and Celebration
Zolla / Lieberman Gallery
Chicago, Illinois
10/81 Previews
Messing Gallery
St. Louis, Missouri
3/82. Challenge and Response
22 New York Artists
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, Indiana
4/82 One Person Show
Zolla / Lieberman Gallery
Chicago, Illinois
1/84 The Don and Nancy Eiler Collection
Madison Art Center
Madison, Wisconsin
2/84. The James Soute Collection
Chicago, Illinois
5/84. Artists Objects
Guild Hall
East Hampton, New York
6/88 25 Years of Collecting
Madison Art Center
Madison, Wisconsin
3/91 Drawing Beyond Nature
University of Iowa
Cedar Falls, Iowa
1/92 Recent Abstract Drawings
Freedman Gallery
Albright College
Reading, Pa.
6/92 “360”
Pino Monica Gallery
New York, NY
1/93 “360”
Pino Monica Gallery
Rome, Italy
11/93 The Return of the Cadavre Exquis
The Drawing Center
New York, NY
1/94 Dieu Donne Benefit Exhibition
New York, NY
1/94 Artists Nature
GCCA Gallery
Catskill, NY
2014,15,16,17. Sideshow Nation
Sideshow Gallery
Brooklyn, NY
6/22 “Boxed In”
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Madison, Wisconsin
