Biography - Perle Fine - Abstract Expressionist Art

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Artist Statements

1) My paintings, like my lithographs, deal not in definition, but rather with the art of evocation and suggestion. I strive at a certain simplicity by cutting away all the non-essential elements, and whatever calligraphy remains is only that necessary to qualify the forms and render a purer deeper emotion.

2) I find that painting is still a great adventure, perhaps because I believe there is a universality in its ideals that makes it more than merely exciting.

3) In his works, I studied above all, his rational concerning the vertical-horizontal and frontal approach in art, and I find that from then on, I was conscious of that quality in all my paintings. (Mondrian)

4) The sum total of my 40 or so years of painting experience has led me from Academism, through Impressionist and Expressionist stages, inevitably through Cubism and Abstraction. Then completely Non-representational painting. Labels are odious, and merely to call my work “grid” painting is certainly a misnomer, since what was intended was to express, through the vertical and horizontal, a Mood of serenity, with color as a most necessary basis for evoking the varieties of moods.

5) To me, my “Accordments” mean an acceptance, serene, tranquil, with evocations of being in tune with nature and the universe.

6) I work to evoke new depths of feeling and to enrich the world of painting as well.

7) In my commitment to the world of abstract art, I propose to push forward beyond the known boundaries of art that evokes, rather than defines.

8) My paintings speak in the only language I know-color. Its fascination makes my stubborn about expressing myself through the plastic play of these pure means. I like to light up a canvas with color; I like to make it shout or whisper; I like to make it spin...or make forms melt softly over the whole picture.

9) The insistence of the singleness of color as exemplified in these canvases came about as a result o a search to make more real, through the terms of the painter, the world of fantasy that I try to express.

10) Every artist, from the moment he or she makes the first stroke on canvas, is destined to follow a certain path. It may not be apparent at first, but aside from the many and varied experiences in art, the fundamental structure of the person will prevail. The hardest thing to do is to make decisions on the big basic things in one’s work. There has to be something that makes one choose Realism, for instance, as opposed to Abstraction; or Semi-abstraction (which is no decision at all) to Photo-realism, or Surrealism, or Purism, or whatever. In my case, I never knew I was making a choice. It seemed that I always painted, and each step that followed simply had to be so, whether good or bad. Vague dissatisfaction was often the catalyst toward the next painting, and I would formulate theories about art, modifying and extending the knowledge that I had up to that time. This led to some changes and much exploration in my work, which appeared much more radical then than it does in retrospect. I was faced with the question “Why was I painting? That the poetic experience should have played a large part in my work was inevitable. It was then that I realized that only through the discipline of painting in the abstract vein, thoroughly understanding all about picture-making, and then carrying it to its next logical step, could I create and express on canvas, with any power, the universal as the ideal. I feel that painting should be more than interesting, should create more than mere excitement.
I think I am doing that in my “Accordments”. My “Accordments” to me mean an Acceptance. Compelling, mysterious, they are yet very tranquil; they are evocations of being in tune with nature and the Universe. My concept of “inwardness” and “awareness” was thus brought into focus and made it imperative that the work take on its most viable form, that is, frontal, holistic, and related to Mondrian’s vertical-horizontal theory. There was a premonition of this form in my paintings of the early fifties, when Mondrian’s ideas of “Equivalences” challenged and modified my earlier ideas, and, though not always obvious, have remained in my work ever since, as I developed it through my own personal vision.

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