Emilio Perez

The artist Emilio Perez, known as “a painter’s painter” due to his renewal and exploration of the classical form, creates uniquely textured paintings in deep and vibrant earth tones, influenced by graphic novels, Pop art, woodcuts, and the Baroque. Perez’s process entails hand-stenciling and using an x-acto blade to slice away at layers of paint, revealing an array of muted colors that results in a fluid contrast between background and foreground. Much of Perez's work takes the form of abstracted takes on water and waves that evolve into semi-surrealistic realms. In paintings like Singing Through the Trees and The Way It Goes, Perez was inspired by Kodak Colorama advertisements from the 1950s to the 1990s that featured iconic American panoramas. In these works, remnants of seascapes blend with landscape and flora.