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Click on any photo to the left to see a larger image of his work
ABOUT JAMES PERIGORD James Perigord’s life and art speak strongly of the profound passion and deep caring of a classically trained artist. Whether he uses a single line to draw a mesa or, after building a surface on his canvas, tears back into that ground, as in his new series, Collage-Decollage spontaneity and control, gesture and restraint, deep emotion combined with profound wisdom direct his work. Collage is a form of art in which disparate objects or elements join to create a landscapeCollage-Decollage, James glues paper with paint to create a surface, then tears layers from that groundwork to discover unexpected patterns, rhythms and images. The images on the canvas shift as he layers his paper and shift again as he removes material. When viewed by us, the final images continue to form and dissolve as though still alive in the unconscious while contained in the frame of the painting. In Collage-Decollage, James works of unaware of how his memories, both personal and collective, live in his skilled hand. While he works, he has no idea what will remain as traces of what once existed anymore than one does in life. The creation/destruction process that leads to transformation, that allows the personal to become universal, is visible on these canvases. At the beginning of the series, the paintings expressed fractured landscapes and a Rorschach of oddly shaped animals, like those that might wander through a child’s dreams or nightmares. Dissonance plays across the canvas. He explores, with incredible gestural ability, his long life. For example, in part of this series, I believe he comes to term with what he experienced during the Second World War. James said the time he saw a body destroyed by war, he felt sick. After a month, he hardly noticed. For such a sensitive artist to become inured, he had to suppress a large part of himself. In this series he returns unconsciously, at a time of a strangely conceived war, to formative experiences. He resolved what he saw and what he did with power and grace. Resolution is particularly apparent in painting # 22 , White Raven : an equilateral cross appears for the first time in the series creating an experience of balance and silence. From this point on, joy and sorrow, among many other emotions, merge to create harmonious and deeply complex musical surfaces.
Judy Tuwalestiwa |
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