On view: July 8 - August 10, 2025
For me, dogs represent repositories of love and desire, at times serving as litmus tests for our abilities to keep a promise. Love may be all that matters to a dog, as it translates into the fulfillment of all of their needs and requirements for life. To a dog, I believe, love is just as necessary as food.
I have read that one of the ways a dog knows when their person will arrive home, is that their smell, fresh in the morning when that person leaves, will diminish gradually. The diminution of the familiar fragrance of their person acts as an hourglass for the dog. Then, the person returns, and the dog can once again bask in the familiarity of their fragrance, and inhale the love that feeds both body and soul.
But change is inevitable, and has the power to upset the delicate balance between the dog’s ability to wait and comfortably anticipate, and the ensuing emptiness when the waiting has gone on for too long. Then what?
These paintings come directly out of my experiences of painting on location in the streets of Chicago. The utter familiarity that I feel for the Chicago landscape and its architecture provide both inspiration and a backdrop for the ghostly images that continue to inhabit my imagination.
At around the age of 13, I inherited a box of paints and some brushes. I knew absolutely nothing about oil paints. But I had an image in my head of a thick wooded area with a path running through the center. A person was walking down the path. This coincidence of the acquisition of the painting materials and the presence of the inner vision ignited my desire to paint. Here was a means of describing something that I could not express in words.
I spent several years attending various colleges, intermittently studying physics and psychology, before getting a degree in drawing and painting, with an emphasis on the figure, from the School of the Art Institute in 1985. During my third year of art school, I attended the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, where I worked primarily from dreams and imagination. I also spent several years in the South of France cultivating a practice of setting up my easel outside and painting the landscape.
I currently work out of my studio located in my home in Evanston, where I live with my husband, and one cat. Our loving dog Suzy died at the end of January, 2024.
Karen Perl is represented by Addington Gallery.
GALLERY HOURS & VISITOR INFORMATION
This exhibition will be held in the Second Floor Atruim Gallery of the Evanston Art Center (EAC). Masks are optional but strongly recommended for students, visitors and staff.
Gallery Hours
Monday–Thursday: 9am–6pm
Friday: 9am–5pm
Saturday–Sunday: 9am–4pm
HOW TO PURCHASE ARTWORK
Artwork sale proceeds benefit both the artist and the Evanston Art Center. If you are interested in purchasing artwork on display, please contact Emma Rose Gudewicz, Director of Development and Exhibition Manager, at [email protected] or (847) 475-5300 x 102.
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.