Peri Schwartz

Peri Schwartz

For the last decade, Peri Schwartz's primary subject has been the interior of her own studio. One might expect this narrow subject matter to be limiting. On the contrary, the exercise has allowed Schwartz to uncover a seemingly boundless reserve of compositions, colors, and surfaces. The history of each image is often visible in the traces of grid lines or the ghosts of objects she has decided to reposition. The viewer has a sense of observing the painting's progression in this way, as if working through the compositional puzzle along with the artist.

Process is paramount, and her paintings are more investigations or studies of an object than polished final products, giving the impression that the artist could pick up her brushes again at any time to adjust one. In turning her attention to her immediate surroundings, she employs the patient discipline of intensive visual study. Her introspective vignettes demonstrate the simple elegance of a cluster of jars and painting tools arranged on a table, well-used art books stacked on an industrial stool, or of sunlight reflecting on glass.

Peri Schwartz (b.1951, Far Rockaway, NY) received a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from Queens College. Her work is represented in the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC , and other museums in the US and Europe.