Perry Vasquez
[Image description: A photo of Perry at work in his studio. He has dark hair and skin that is, in his own words, Burnt Sienna + Naples Yellow with hints of Alizarin Crimson. He wears a green sweater and black glasses, and turns to look at the camera.]
Perry Vasquez was born in Los Angeles and grew up in North Carolina. He has operated in the San Diego/Tijuana border region since 1987. After completing his studies in early 1990, Vasquez began making excursions across the border to investigate the cultural milieu of Tijuana. He was drawn to its bookstores, cinemas, souvenir shops, music clubs and public spaces. The result of his experiences was Keep On Crossin’, a multi-disciplinary project that humorously combined the guilty pleasures of tourist art with a pro-immigrant point of view. In the 2000s, he began to cultivate his interest in oil painting with a series of prints and canvases that weave together diverse mythologies emblematic of the border region. Recently he has focused on the iconic image of the palm tree as a subject matter for his interest in the myth of California. Perry was recently selected to create a series of murals for the new San Diego County Probation Building. His favorite color is green, his favorite number is 5 and his favorite cereal is Captain Crunch.
His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Self-Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA; the Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco, CA; and Neu West Berlin Gallery, Berlin, Germany, among other venues.
Read about his work on HereIn: