Sue Perry - Paintings

I remember hearing a local artist grumble unhappily about paintings with letters or inscriptions:  “We already have an art form with words,” he said.  “It’s called literature.”   So then maybe the painting above is illegitimate.  In fact I’ve had trouble giving it a name.  Sometimes it’s been “Text & Context in Belleville.”  Sometimes it’s been “Belleville Babel.”   And indeed it may have been the English Major in me who was struck by this motif; “Text and Context” is an image reflecting an intensely multicultural reality, including a socially transmitted fabric of artistic activity based on letters and words made dynamically visual.