My name is George Perrou, and this is my art. My artistic vision is rooted in those elements of my childhood which are shared with many of you. Ignited by visions of space-race machinery, my little-boy imagination was inspired by the new amorphous and other-worldly shapes that came with them and became popularized with the industrial design found in the everyday products of our family home. Being drawn to these shapes and colors as envisioned by Calder, Miro and Kandinsky, I have created with them my own style by imagining the things which I see into my own colorful versions of reality. I then re-create those images onto the canvas because, frankly, I have no choice but to do so. I find painting my landscapes to be meditative, much like raking a Zen garden…it transports me as if traveling, but like stepping instead into another world.
Having completed my first works at the age of 34, I was finally able to satisfy with my paintings a strong urge to create something from nothing. After “listening to the whisper” calling me to my art, it took years and maturity for me to quiet the noises of life enough to be able to hear it clearly, allowing me to respond. I relay a lifetime of stories onto the canvas for others to explore, never having to fabricate of force one to tell.
I’m told that my work’s appeal is as much about how it makes people feel as it is about how it looks to them. I consider my paintings to be architectural landscapes, which are amalgams of the real and the surreal. Inspired by mid-century animation and painted with retro and modern colors, my art evokes reminiscence to the giddy, Saturday mornings of ‘a better time’ filled with the Hana-Barbera and Warner Bros. cartoons of our youth.
I paint my anthro-morphic landscapes and images with a flow-of-consciousness technique, drawing from things I see and feel infused with a sub-conscience library of imagery built since childhood. I usually work on at least two paintings concurrently, allowing inspiration to dictate the brushstrokes until partway created.
Stepping back to determine how then to best work the canvas with balance and structure, I finish the piece on a more technical plane. I never work from sketches, because I find working from them much like trying to nail Jell-O© to a wall. The image on the canvas morphs into what it is with little conscious direction from
me…and I am often surprised at what it has become.
