“Call on Me” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 66 x 78 inches. All images © Pat Perry, shared with permission
Especially Terrific, the title of Pat Perry’s most recent body of work, is multivalent. The phrase invokes both the exceptional and also the grim, which the Detroit-based artist conjures as he captures singular moments on canvas.
On view through October 13 at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Especially Terrific zeroes in on “America from backstage,” glimpsing small-town life and family gatherings. Two women pose on wooden bleachers with an array of cakes and pies in “Call on Me,” while “Memorial Van” displays four photos on the dashboard of a weathered vehicle. Baked with nostalgia, the paintings evoke candid photos and capture a moment in time, one that has inevitably passed.
Perry settled on the idea for the series while reading an architecture book that described the calming, pleasant human reaction to perfect, harmonious design as a response to encountering order amid a chaotic world. “Paintings can function similarly,” he noted, “somehow tempering the parts of experience that are especially terrifying to confront.” He came upon the passage around the same time that a childhood friend’s mom died, a period of grief that reminded him of the hopeful potential of making art. He added:
As paintings, those terrifying parts are quieted down. Somehow they are transformed into something oddly serene. Painting is an act of venturing into your own mental wilderness, facing a monster that you know will devour you, and even though you can’t defeat it, reckoning with it by doing something productive and creative.
In addition to the smaller works on canvas, Perry recently completed a pair of murals in Buffalo and Knoxville. Evoking expansive collages of photos, drawings, and paintings, both reference how memories can be gathered, grouped, and organized. Find more of the artist’s work on his website and Instagram.
“Erie County Witness Tree Map,” commissioned by Buffalo AKG Museum
Detail of “Call on Me” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 66 x 78 inches
Detail of “Erie County Witness Tree Map”
“Visitors” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 42 x 55 inches
Mural commissioned by Dogwood Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee
“Memorial Van” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 62 x 78 inches
Detail of “Memorial Van” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 62 x 78 inches
“Together Garden” (2023), acrylic on panel, 33 x 49 inches
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