Figments – drawings by Gil Perry

Works on Paper’s Gallery @ 7 The Square is pleased to announce a new exhibition of drawings by local artist Gil Perry. This is the first time Gil’s drawings have been seen together as a comprehensive body of work. The exhibit opens with an artist’s reception on Friday, December 17th from 5:00-8:00 and is part of Bellows Falls Third Fridays.  The drawings will be on display through the closing reception on January 21st. Gil’s drawings are incredibly detailed imaginations built up by intensely layered marks of graphite and ink on the paper.

Gil describes his artistic process below:

“I reach a state of wonder and discovery when I draw. In an unconscious way I am developing an extraordinary vocabulary of design by letting go and giving my imagination voice. Intuitively I feel a larger gallery of images is open to me and a completely “Other” vision than I have in my conscious control. As the drawing unfolds and my poetic imagination takes over there is a great deal of restraint in my conscious mind to not give way to “pareidolia” – or seeing faces in non face objects, and to grab just any image that first emerges. In this way I descend into deeper strata of the unconscious to a more mythic realm. Leaving the mechanisms of the conscious mind behind there is a sense of leaving the world of time and entering the realm of the Eternal. It is this threshold that I call the Whispering Gallery.

When the ego becomes transparent and the center of the self dissolves into an emptiness, or cloud of unknowing, this absence is actually a presence where the divine dwells. Here images are more archetypal and numinous and there is a creative “elan vital” where life becomes new and fully alive. At these depths everything turns rich and the inner adventure bestows unending gifts and infinite creative possibilities. Since surrendering always leads to a greater return I have developed a faith that replaces the fear that I will be lost by letting go. Surrendering one’s control to a transformative vision that is always larger than what is surrendered, yet yields within it a greater totality which contains every level within the whole. Through the years I have come to think of this process as, Art as Revelation.”