Flores 

FLORES, Collages by Keith Perelli 

In creating these new collage paintings that reflect on my interest in nature, flora and the Artistic history of floral painting as a time-honored subject for even the most abstract to the conceptual of artists. Here, I thought of nature as fleeting, it’s beauty and life quickly passes before us re- vealing an almost real-time metaphor for life. In the tradition of the Nature Morte still life painters, I wanted some of the trompe l’oeil illusionism of observed realism with a flourish of ab- straction or brush strokes that flatten and break the depth to make us more aware of the flat- ness of the surface the way in which an abstract or minimalist painter might. !

The collage process allows me the carefully hunt and select papers that best emulate the tex- tures and directional movement and strokes that might best suggest the artists stroke to create petal, bud or leaf. I further imbedded the surface with touches of bling and shimmer as I thought of the beaded “immortels” that sometimes graced the tombs around New Orleans long before plastic flowers. I also thought of my own fascination with the rich opulence and tradition of ball costumes or the socialization and almost meditative process and creation of sewing beads into magical cos- tumes created by the Mardi Gras Indians.

I found this work to be calming in its process as it takes hours to pin up and sample various combinations of shapes and colors to emulate the form and movement of each flower. The hand painted creation of the paper is the more expressive and fever pitched phase in which laws of chance and experimentation with application and layering are embraced to optimize the richest hues and textures in a variety of hues and values.

The work is influenced by the Flemish floral painters, the Impressionist and most notably the work of the Victorian era paper flower artist Mrs. Delany Her intricate studies of specimens mim- ic the technically crafted delicacy of the Asian paper artists but with an edited simplicity of a botanical purist offering catalogued and detailed studies of many species.
I was also interested in master works by painters such as Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Rachel Ruysch, Henri Fantin Latour as inspiration and starting points but approaching them as though the flowers were metaphors for human relationships and plays on vulnerability, and Nature’s non-moral selection of hosts to carry disease and other aliments which weaken and age people. The flower represents a sexuality, courtship, funerals, memory, friendship and mortality. We in- terpreting nature through the lens of Art, History, biology genetics and photography. (looking for a sociological and scientific point of view of nature through various centuries). The beauty, the sexuality and how nature has built into itself a sort of flirtatious seduction to temp her fertilizers and also a non-discriminatory system ensuring fertilization and survival. As Steven Jay Gould so eloquently spoke of nature and the survival of the AIDS virus, “ Nature is non-discriminatory and shall do whatever it must to survive.”!
Again, the flower opens, blooms and wains. Do we desire to only see it’s beauty at its peak of prowess or do we reflect on its ephemeral nature as a something more attuned to our own existence? !

-Keith Perelli !

Top Left: Poppies, painted acrylic collage paper, nails, on wood panel, 24 x 24, Private Collection 

Bottom Left: Pig, composition in black and white, painted acrylic collage paper, nails, on wood panel, 24 x 24, Private Collection 

Right: A-Muse, painted acrylic collage paper, nails, on wood panel, 24 x 24, Private Collection 

Bellow: Composition in White, Acrylic on paper and Mylar, Swarovsky crystals, nails on wood, 36" x 49" 

Left: Falls, Acrylic on paper and Mylar, Swarovsky crystals, nails on wood, 49" x 49" Private Collection 

Bottom: NightFalls, Acrylic on paper and Mylar, Swarovsky crystals, nails on wood, 49" x 49" Southeastern University, Louisiana Contemporary Art Year-long Exhibit Jun 24-May 25 Work Available after exhibition