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ANGELA PERKO - Artists - Sullivan Goss Art Gallery

The Garden of Dreams, 2015

60 x 72 inches  |  oil on canvas

Like many women artists, Angela started painting later in life, after her children were older and the family business was well established. Angela and her husband own a rare bookstore, and she credits the exposure to art books for sparking her interest in painting. Although she studied plein-air painting with Santa Barbara artist, Michael Drury, she is essentially a self taught artist. The Canadian Group of Seven greatly influenced her early work, as well as many of the Santa Fe's Transcendental Painting Group. A trip to the Yucatán had a profound impact and motifs of ancient art and popular Mexican art began to appear in her work.

From her first sold out solo exhibition with the gallery in 2005, Angela’s focus on the immediate landscape and surrounding architecture has progressed to paintings that contain more pressing issues like the environment, social justice, and women’s reproductive rights. Over the years, her palette has become more saturated, rich, and vivid in keeping with the deeper messages that can be found in her more recent work.

In 2023 Angela was asked to create three paintings for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. One of the paintings was chosen by SBIFF executive Director, Roger Durling, to become the official poster for the 2024 film festival. One other painting was featured on the cover of the Santa Barbara Independent for their February, 2024 film festival issue. The paintings (and poster) incorporate cinematic themes by way of fractal shapes and colors as well as surrealist narratives, which are common elements in much of Angela’s work.

 

 

Videos

3:05  |  Narrated by Susan Bush  |  Released for ANGELA PERKO: Just Another Pretty Picture, 2020

3:34  |  Narrated by Susan Bush  |  Released for ANGELA PERKO: Relics of Another Eden, 2017

 

 

2:55  |  Narrated by Jeremy Tessmer  |  Released for ANGELA PERKO: Earthy Delights, 2015

2:58  |  Narrated by Jeremy Tessmer  |  Released for Angela Perko, 2013

3:34  |  Narrated by Susan Bush  |  Released for Angela Perko, 2011

3:05  |  Narrated by Susan Bush  |  Released for ANGELA PERKO: New Paintings, 2009

More Information

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

Angela Perko has employed the "Seven's" reliance on bright colors with her own ability to reduce a painting's composition to a field of planes, each celebrating a color which at times is dissonant and at times harmonic to neighboring colors. Despite her efforts to flatten her planes of color, the artist manages to create paintings of remarkable depth and energy. Perko eschews the Group of Seven's reliance on the impact of brushstroke. Her work is characterized by a flat color field with little evidence of brushstroke.

I started painting landscapes mostly to be outside. Painting became my personal dialogue with naure. I was never concerned with accurately documenting a place, instead the paintings were attempts to conjure the essential nature of the subject and my own connection to it.

Generally, the picture plane is flattened to emphasize the relationship between objects and to bring the viewer more closely into the scene. Forms are stylized and colors are enhanced or left pure. Compositions are chosen to create rhythm and balance. The struggle is to obtain unity. It should be balanced, but not quite, precise but not perfect. Life should be sense just under the surface. - Angela Perko

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022  ANGELA PERKO: The Place of Hidden Things, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2020  Not Just Another Pretty Picture, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2017  Relics of Another Eden, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2015  Earthly Delight, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2013  Angela Perko, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2011  Angela Perko, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2009  Angela Perko: New Paintings, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2007 Angela Perko, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2005  Angela Perko, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2004  Face to Face: A Selection of American Portraits", Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017   Masterworks, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2016   The Arts of Santa Barbara 1875 - 2016, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2015   The Declarations of Independents, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2014   Celebrating 30 Years of Art, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2012   Figuring Out California, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2011-2018  100 Grand Show, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA

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