"Especially in paintings of interiors there is a sort of portraiture that takes place in what people choose to put on display. I love the idea that those objects either define who they are or who they aspire to be.”
Vibrant and jubilant, Hilary Pecis’ Clementine’s Bookshelf of 2021 is a stunning exemple of the artist’s dedicated interrogation of still life and interior painting. Based in Los Angeles, the California native takes inspiration from her daily encounters to interweave quotidian scenes into lively paintings brimming with saturated hues and sumptuous brushstrokes. Working from photographs of her home or those of her friends, Pecis uses this collects ion of images as a point of departure for her idiosyncratic style which combines bold patterns, bright colors, abstraction, and altered perspective. Further test.mes nt to the soaring interest surrounding her practice, Pecis has found her works collects ed by prominent institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Palm Springs Art Museum; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Pecis’ paintings are often brimming with recognizable details that vie for our attention. Clementine’s Bookshelf foregrounds a handsomely patterned cat, sitting inside a cardboard box, gazing at the viewer. Behind it is a luxurious spread of iconic books, ranging from academic surveys on William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer to catalogues on modern and contemporary art, or essays by contemporary authors such as David Foster Wallace and Olivia Laing. Each and every one of these objects acts as a gateway for viewers to interact with and relate to the painting, thereby taking themselves deeper into the world Pecis has created. Revealing a private space, featuring books that allow us to glean at one’s interests, backgrounds, and histories, Pecis provides the viewer with an opportunity to explore their imagination, picturing the person who assembled this particular selection in their home. The absence of a human figure in Pecis’ painting counter-intuitively opens up a channel for a deeper understanding of the person behind her compositions.
“She’s kind of like our David Hockney. There’s that free, Laurel-Canyon-pool, everyone-sleeps-with-everyone version of L.A.—the David Hockney version of L.A. Then there’s the domestic L.A., where there’s a bowl of oranges in the corner and you’re looking at a book about Bob Thompson, having your matcha tea—and you are slower than your friends in New York. It’s like the dream of L.A. I think she embodies that.”
These luscious renditions of everyday life are based on a meticulous and attentive process. Pecis often takes “vignettes” of daily life using her mobile phone camera—a colorful roadside signboard or a friend’s bookshelf, as in Clementine’s Bookshelf—creating a cache or archive of images that she finds inspiring. Later returning to said archive, she arranges the items within each photo into a composition fit for her acrylics, building up an image with judiciously placed brushstrokes of vivid color. She begins with what she calls an “initial quickness,” a rapid scrawling of the composition onto the canvas, from which she moves onto more careful approaches that tidy up the space and the diverse components of the painting. The resulting painting is a distillation of the artist’s attentive and earnest perspective that reconsiders the topography of daily life.
Pecis’ paintings and their characteristic exuberance are undoubtedly evocative of the Fauvists, not least Henri Matisse. She frequently approaches details of her paintings with bright brushstrokes of color that appear to fade into a pattern of saturated, geometric, contrasting patches of color, redolent of Matisse’s celebrated paper cut-outs or his whimsical mosaic-like domestic interiors. The artist also cites California Funk and Pop art as a core inspiration for her work: “The Fauves and Funk artists are on the opposite ends of abstraction, one leading into, and the other a reaction after, but both have a vibrancy that speaks to me.” (the artist quoted in: Maria Vogel, “Hilary Pecis Conveys the Essence of an Environment,” Art of Choice, February 28 2019 (online)) The expressive flexibility in her use of color and line also hint at her interest in German Expressionists such as Gabriele Münter and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Combining images from her personal life with her inspiration from predecessors who explored the capabilities of color in the pictorial space, Pecis presents a quotidian yet magical slice of life.
At once familiar and vivacious, Clementine’s Bookshelf puts Pecis’ confident use of color on full display and presents a canvas suffused with a magical, intimate quality that enthralls the viewer. Intricately painted and saturated with color, it is a standout example of the artist’s approach to the art historical tradition of still life, allowing the viewer a glimpse of a personal space full of comfort and joy. With a jubilant symphony of bright reds, forest greens, and deep ochres, the present work uncovers magical moments amongst the banal: “When we spend a little extra t.mes looking at the everyday objects around us, where it is the things we see inside or outside, the living and inanimate, things staged and those that move such as shadows and reflections, we notice the magic in all of those things. My attempt is to pick up on some of the nuances and elevate those things.” (the artist quoted in: Pearl Fontaine, “Hilary Pecis Enchants Rockefeller Center with Colorful, Intimate Work,” Whitewall, 22 July 2021 (online))
