Interview with Zara Kand and Tracy Perdue – Show Opens October 14 at SevVen Gallery
The Los Angeles area is a hub for emerging artists. Right now, it’s one of the things we do best, and we are so lucky to live in a vicinity where creativity is as ubiquitous as it is. Be that as it may, we at Cartwheel Art, with a little humility, like to think we have a knack for finding the best of these emerging artists. Here is an interview with two such types in a show opening and closing tonight. Zara Kand, the painter, and Tracy Perdue, the multimedia artist. Both have works at SevVen Gallery in Huntington Beach on view from 7 p.m. until midnight.
Zara Kand is a young artist who’s paintings successfully hold the delicate balance between orgiastic lushness of color and subtly subconscious symbolism. Part of what makes her imagery so interesting is the way she draws the female body. It’s real. Flesh. They look like actual human beings having actual expressions. Emoting, but not dramatic. Just being. Surrounded by swirling dream-like landscapes. When asked about how she sees her work, Kand states:
I like my painted environments to be rather dreamy, similar to reality but not quite, so that they viewer can feel as though they are being transported to a place familiar yet bordering on the periphery of the subconscious. It is very important to me to be able to stir some kind emotional reaction through my work, so I often use the human form as a vehicle for such expression, as it is the most direct way that I can at this time. The symbols are used to relay deliberate meaning, while being subtle enough to where the viewer can play their own game of interpretation. Within us is a loving, glowing furnace of creativity that wants to be explored and shared, and no earthly obstacle will ever take away our right to access it.
Tracy Perdue’s three dimensional pieces depicting parts of the human body give emotion to the physical. These works give emotion to anatomy, showing heartbreak, and the fraying brought by human connection. These pieces are labor-intensive. Of the process, Perdue says:
Some have 100+hours put into them, but I love doing it. It’s fulfilling putting something out into the world that means something to me, and I guess I just hope that others will connect to the work, and it will mean something to them too. So much goes into making these pieces, I use plaster, marble paste, acrylics, resin, and any found objects that I hope will speak to the viewer, but the foundation of most of my sculptures is body casting. I’m really inspired by watching people, their emotions and motivations. What they say without ever speaking a word. Most of the pieces in the show at SevVen are about love and fear, and how regardless of vulnerability or past heartache, we all want the same thing, to be loved.
Bring yourself to the County of Orange tonight, to see the works of painter Zara Kand and mixed media artist Tracy Perdue who are featured at gallery SevVen! The gallery will be open from 7 p.m. until midnight, and a musical performance will accompany the art featuring Gitane DeMone, Rikk Agnew and Deb Venom. These are performers one might recall from the good ol’ days of Los Angeles’ punk and goth music scene.