Exhibition Title – Secret Life of Flowers
February 21 – March 22, 2026
Stone Tower Gallery Glen Echo Park 7300 MacArthur Blvd.,
From Washington Post review:
In her Stone Tower Gallery show, Perry foregrounds bright, precisely rendered blooms before complex, half-hidden backdrops. Flowers may dance across the sky in front of a massive waterfall, or rest next to a culture on which floral motifs are carved in stone. These playful juxtapositions are meant, according to the artist’s statement, to yield “a comprehensive unity.”
Exhibition Concept
Recent paintings all thematically tied together in using floral elements in a quantum arrangement. Vicky Perry has returned repeatedly to realist renditions of flowers as totemic images. The flower – an object of naturally refined beauty – is a powerful messenger, attracting and engaging while existing as an emblem of an imaginary universe. The commentary on today’s world: each flower is a personality that exist as a gold standard against which civilization may be measured. Glen Echo Park’s Stone Tower Gallery presents intimate exhibitions of work in the Park’s most historic structure
I have returned repeatedly to realist renditions of flowers as totemic images. The flower – an object of naturally refined beauty – is a powerful messenger, attracting and engaging while existing as an emblem of an imaginary universe. The commentary on today’s world: the flowers are personalities that exist as a gold standard against which civilization may be measured.
Biography
For over 40 years, my aim has been to discover a style of realist painting that builds on past art innovation. I transitioned from a focus on minimalist canvases to representation.
In the New York City art scene of the 1980s, graffiti art was popular; I choose to teach myself how to render refined landscapes from vintage slides. Subsequently, I worked in earnest on the current body of work that expands realism to incorporate other visual languages: digital manipulations, abstractions,
sculptural effects.
My first formal art studies were printmaking, etching and lithography in New York and Tampa, FL. I then studied at NYU with Idelle Weber who created an austere realism that spoke to abstract and minimalist traditions. I also studied computer science and got a master’s degree with a focus on artificial intelligence.Statement
My paintings reflect an interest in bringing together different ways of picture making, combining abstraction and digital manipulation with realism. Landscapes led to a number of still-lifes and floral paintings, all with a juxtaposed abstract area that complemented the realism. A number of paintings incorporated sculptural elements as well, such as canvases hanging from other canvases.
More recently, I have sought to weave the non-realism more closely with the realism rather relying on simple juxtaposition. In reference to quantum ideas, the principle known as entanglement is part of how I compose layers of images into a single whole. The final test of the work is whether the disparate areas relate to one another and make up a unified whole.
The juxtaposition of abstraction on a canvas with realist representation is a format I have returned to repeatedly. Another juxtaposition is to combine a realist image with its “double” – showing the image from another angle, reversing the colors, or altering the orientation. Yet another update to the tradition of realism is to break up the painting surface with textures or other elements that accentuate the objectness of the painting – a more sculptural realism.
Finally, what is the point of making realism work in the context of the past one hundred years of art moving away from realism? Precisely because it is possible that when disparate objects or disparate ideas can be held in meaningful relationship with one another, a comprehensive unity can be created. This engenders some enlightening understanding.