Don’t miss what’s sure to be a lively and entertaining evening with artist Angela Perko in conversation with Roger Durling, who wrote the comprehensive cover story about Perko for the August 11 issue of Santa Barbara Independent. Held at Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery, where Perko’s show, The Place of Hidden Things, is on view through September 26, the evening will delve into Perko’s inspiration and process behind her newest body of work.
Her recurring interest in depictions of women is particularly vivid in a collection of 17 10″x10″ paintings included in the exhibit, each one spotlighting a fertility figure from a different historical culture. “The idea to paint a series was inspired in part by Kehinde Wiley’s Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan . I admired the painting when it was displayed at our local [Santa Barbara] museum. For me, it seemed that Wiley was attempting to visually fill a gaping hole in our mythology in a most grand and dramatic fashion…. The little women are not grand, but together they tell an absolutely essential human story,” shared Perko.
The self-taught artist has been represented by Sullivan Goss since 2005. She and her husband, Jerry Jacobs, also own the Lost Horizon bookstore in Montecito, which provides an endless stream of ideas to inform her work. This is her ninth solo exhibition with the gallery and her third to concentrate on her own mytho-historical ideas.