GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS

When lighting strikes it appears like a crack running through the fabric of things from heaven to earth, from spirit to matter. Where this shock touches sand it leaves irregular pieces of glass, as if the ground was attempting to materialize all the emotions shaken by the transmission.

Grace Rosario Perkins was born in the summer of 1986 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. If there is a peak season for lightning this is it, in the heat of late July. Perkins was born at night when these lines of electricity would have pulled everything around them out of the darkness.

The moment of Perkins’ arrival was marked by two planets in particular - Uranus and Jupiter. Poised at the highest point in the sky, Uranus, like a bolt of lightning, is symbolic of sudden insights and awareness with an aim toward autonomy and freedom. Jupiter appeared on the horizon shortly after Perkins herself, shimmering, the dance of a refracted light accompanied by reverent silence.

Her life promised to be like this, an endless revelation of an internal jewel, holding it as you would a prism on a string, letting it spin to see all of the places her light could reach. Her work, like Uranus, was destined to illuminate and stand apart.

When you send a light out into infinity unexpected things flash in reply, a secret code of recognition. Perkins’ paintings draw these rarities together - colors, photographs, flowers, words spoken by people she loves, song lyrics - all flicker in moments through the layers.

Visible in Perkins’ work is what she has surfaced, the way a wave retreating from the beach will leave a trail of treasures in the sand. But eyes are not the only witness — what is palpable in her art could be compared to an incantation. There is a feeling that something in her work is holding the space outside the paintings themselves, the way a rumble of thunder will hold the shape of the entire sky. Let Me Clear My Throat opens on February 11th in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

— Marty Windahl, Astrologer & Tarot Reader, commissioned for the occasion of Let Me Clear My Throat

Best Western is pleased to announce “Let Me Clear My Throat”, a solo exhibition of six new paintings and print edition by self-taught Diné/Akimel O’odham painter, Grace Rosario Perkins.

The exhibition is a continuation of Perkins interest in familial histories and visualizations of emotional complexity through densely layered compositions with paint and numerous unconventional materials. First, grounded in text, Perkins intuitively maps her personal experiences into each painting and follows with ruthless editing, pushing the work to the edge of ruin only to reel it in. Seemingly vertiginous currents of air fill each composition to create an energetic buzz that settles with time.

Reimagining the charm of urgent graffiti, intention setting, medicinal plant language, inspirational quotes, punk icon Poly Styrene, tattered Reggae CD advertisements, ever-present basketball references, bay leaves, paint mixed with altar oils and flower essences, and tapered candles build create points of entry for the viewer and serve as an atlas of Perkins’ deep research. The paintings are warm and inviting. They hold strong formal qualities of surface tension and color play that stay rooted in this world and Perkins’ world.