Thoughts On Paintings

Pat Perry on his new exhibition at UICA, National Lilypond Songs

A friend remarked to me right as I was starting this project that it's our job to make the kind of work we wish we saw more of in the world. There is the field of American art and culture focused on offering momentary escape, and then there is the smaller field, focused on helping confront some part of our own lives. The former, though fine in small doses, is almost ubiquitous and has mass appeal. The latter is more rarely addressed, mostly because it's harder and also, less fun. Despite that, it desperately needs our continued attention and care. This was always in the back of my mind while making this work. There is a certain kind of darkness that often goes unspoken, and there are feelings that are seldomly orbited as a topic. This three-year project I’ll tell you about was an experiment to see if some of that might transmit through the fabric of the landscape, personal shame, bewilderment, isolation—the same conditions that produce school shooters and evangelical carpet salesmen who give their kids signs to hold that say, “God Hates Fags,” and internet bullies, and real life bullies, and people who wear the red hats with the white writing, and also, each of us. We all live with a level of anxiety, not knowing much for certain other than eventually, as writer Robert Coover put it, “awaiting us all is a doorway into oblivion that we shy away from until, in pain and terror, we’re propelled through it into eternal dreamless night and forgotten.” When works of writing and art are absorbed in a way that shows someone else shares the same vulnerability in the same uncertain way, it can be life-saving, figuratively and literally.