The dozen paintings in this virtual exhibition of work by Steven Perkins were completed within a span of seven years, the earliest dating from 1988, the most recent completed in 1994. They are arranged below in chronological order in a long column to the left of a short statement by the artist that describes some of the ideas and motivations underlying what he paints and how he works. An interview with Steven Perkins, with Frank Peseckis as interviewer, took place in September 1997 on the occasion of the opening of this virtual exhibition. Perkins discusses many of these paintings in much greater depth in the interview, which can be found in our library.

A Statement by the Artist "My paintings are allegorical landscapes and still lifes. They meld diverse elements from observations of the natural world with personally significant objects of memory and invention. "Landscape, forest, stream, rock, sky, tree, moss, salamander, fish, flower -- the sense of being alive that comes from these things; life that is bigger than our selves and overpowering in complexity; and beauty that almost has a voice, that unveils it's treasure to us, it's details, the lichen covered rock, the brilliantly colored salamander, the wild orchid -- I want to translate the feeling of these things, the emotion of place, into painting, so that I can know these things more deeply and communicate to others something of what I feel. Imagination leaps to fill the landscape with a story, the narrative of the human relationship to a place. Invention supports the narrative and intensifies visual structure. "But the most important thing is feeling. Finding treasure, finding beauty, how does this feel? "By rendering things as they are (in varying degrees) you can provide a foundation of understanding from which the viewer can then enter the painting (hopefully) on a deeper level. The other answer is that the kind of realism that I've been working in is a compulsion -- it's my vision of the world as a place with its treasures revealed, its details brought out for us to marvel at, bringing us delight and understanding." -- Steven Perkins