Since Joan Perlman’s initial trip to Iceland in 1995, she has returned often, drawn to the restlessness of its active geology. Over time, she has observed the receding glaciers and changing river patterns that are evidence of climate change. To her, the mutability of the landscape has taken on an inchoate sense of fragility and loss. Her interest in the implications of these extreme changes has informed her paintings, which she considers to be abstracted stories of personal experience, rather than formal observation. Perlman’s work is developed through a multi-layered process of under painting and pouring. The resulting compositions convey the sensuous, primal qualities of the Icelandic landscape, and reflect her perceptions of its changing shape. In this way, her paintings move beyond realism to grapple with nature in its most elemental form, and they resonate with a deeply felt sense of place.

Joan Perlman’s investigations of the Icelandic terrain have been featured in several solo exhibitions, most recently at the Hafnarborg Institute of Culture and Fine Art in Hafnarfjördur, Iceland. She will have a solo exhibit at David Cunningham Projects in San Francisco, CA, later this year. Perlman’s work has been included in many group exhibitions, including the the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA; the Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Center for Icelandic Art, Reykjavik, Iceland; the Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; and the Jewish Museum in San Francisco, CA. In 2007 she received an ARC Grant from the Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, to support her video work in Icleand. She earned her BFA at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA. For more information visit www.joanperlman.com.