Don Perley began his career as an artist in 1975. For the first 15 years his work centered on experiments in acrylic painting and painted collages created from product packaging and other public advertising. By the year 2000, he had evolved these two lines of development into painted assemblages created with diverse malleable materials and abstract oil paintings bursting with color. Perley has successfully developed a unique voice and language that presents the joyous and healing messages he finds in the heart of untamed nature. Perley is the recipient of several awards for painting and has had solo gallery shows in Philadelphia (Schmidt/Dean), the Hudson Valley (Albert Shahinian) and New York City (Pleiades). A Midwest native, Perley lives and works in Stamford, Ct.
These days I am just concerned with liberating color from the cruel tyranny of confinement in the tube!
SOLO SHOWS AND AWARDS
Solo show, Pleiades Gallery, NYC, 2022
97th Annual Juried Exhibition, Greenwich Art Society. D. H. Griswold award for best painting - “Mirage,” 2014
East End Arts, Riverhead, NY, 3rd Annual National Juried Art Competition - Best in Show, “Juju,” 2014, award and artist-in-residence
Solo show, Albert Shahinian Fine Art, Rhinebeck NY, 2014
Solo show, Albert Shahinian Fine Art, Poughkeepsie NY, 2004
Solo show, Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Philadelphia, 1991
Solo show, Momenta Art Alternatives, Philadelphia, 1989
SELECTIONS FROM JURIED COMPETITIONS
106th Annual Juried Exhibition, Greenwich Art Society - “Talisman,” 2023
The Ridgefield Guild of Artists 43rd Annual Juried Show - “The Colorworks,” 2020
SPECTRUM Exhibition, New Canaan Society for the Arts - “Wired,” 2018
Flinn Gallery Juried Exhibition, Greenwich Art Society - “Forgotten Dreams,” 2016
98th Annual Juried Exhibition, Greenwich Art Society - “Rough Sketch,” 2015
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is improvisational, layered and complex. It is also naturally joyous and tender. I very much believe in the artist as alchemist who can transform the wretchedness of our world into something more precious than gold.
In my work secrets are revealed slowly over time. The raw and rough of chance improvisational encounters, upon close observation, become delicate, soothing
and healing.
My paintings have no center of focus - they push the eye from one passage to another on a journey of spontaneity. They draw the viewer into an exploration of the raw physical properties of paint, ink and materials that deform to present their essence, to offer themselves up.
What I create are arenas for colors and materials to display their properties freely in play and combine in unplanned and joyous ways. My intention is not so much the creation of art but more a search for spontaneous life springing out of improvisations in pure color. This is a fundamentally exuberant enterprise, and I see it as direct painting, direct expression and direct communication.