Maggie Perrin-Key
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Maggie Perrin-Key is a painter based in Roanoke, Virginia, in a valley surrounded on all sides by the Appalachian Mountains. She paints flowers, zoomed in until they go almost abstract. In grade school she came across Helen Frankenthaler in a magazine during art class, the Gordon Parks photos where Frankenthaler is sitting on the paintings, surrounded by them, and that is how she first understood abstraction. By high school she had a camera and was shooting flowers in macro mode. She also makes murals and cut-paper installations for public spaces.
Q: How did flowers become the whole subject? Was there a specific moment, or did it happen gradually?
A: It's definitely been gradual. As a kid who played outside and wandered around the woods all the time, nature was just a part of life—and flowers were always my favorite. I remember getting a camera in high school and taking all of these super up-close photos of flowers in macro mode. Over the years, my relationship with the natural world has flowed in and out of my work, and now it's just taking center stage.
The city where I live is in a valley, surrounded on all sides by the Appalachian Mountains. It's a lush, green home, and I can't imagine how my environment wouldn't creep into the work.
Q: You zoom deep into your photographs until the image becomes almost abstract. When did you realise that what you were finding in there was more interesting than the full picture?
A: My introduction to abstraction happened in a grade school art class; I was flipping through old magazines for a collage and happened upon an article about Helen Frankenthaler. The article included those famous portraits of her by Gordon Parks, the ones where she's sitting on her paintings and completely surrounded by them.
Ever since then, my sense of the abstract has been merged with a feeling of immersion. I find myself drawn to subjects and compositions that engage the body, either in scale or subject. With the flowers, I imagine jumping into the bloom, being totally enveloped by it. My relationship with nature is a nurturing one; I feel spiritually and emotionally held when I'm in the woods or just around a bunch of flora. My work right now feels like a reflection of that.
Q: Golden Hum started as a close-up of a plant but reads almost like a doorway. Do the paintings always surprise you like that?
A: Not always, but often! I typically make multiple sketches of a composition, so there's usually a plan ahead of me before I start a piece. But there's something magical that happens when you translate a sketch into a final painting, or go from one medium to another. Certain elements get highlighted in different ways, and the overall effect changes. The scale affects it as well; Golden Hum in particular was translated into a 5' painting, and when you're standing in front of it, that "doorway" effect gets punctuated.
Q: You also make murals and site-specific paper installations. What's different about making work for a public space?
A: I see paintings and site-specific work as existing in different worlds. When I make a painting, I'm creating another reality that exists within the confines of the canvas. To experience that painting, one has to mentally enter into that two-dimensional space. With murals and installations, it's the other way around. They are created in our world, interacting with our sense of space. We experience them as part of a room or on a building, affecting the space in and around it.
But beyond that, when I'm making work for public spaces, I know people are going to be interacting with it. I'm not sure if it changes the outcome, but I'm more aware of its external qualities. With a painting, perhaps no one will ever see it? It's more internal in that way.
Q: You trained in observational oil painting but now you work in acrylic and coloured pencil. What made you leave oil behind?
A: I cycle through mediums on a rotating basis, switching between oil, acrylic, cut paper, painted silk, coloured pencil. I don't feel like I really leave any of them behind. I can only concentrate on one or two mediums at a time, so the rest get put away for a while until I'm ready to explore an idea through one of them.
My recent work has been focused on opaque, flat blocks of color, and acrylic lends itself better to that. Sometimes it takes seven layers of thin acrylic to achieve that flat shape, but it gets there. By contrast, oil is so dimensional by nature, which of course is part of the magic of it, but that hasn't been my priority.
Q: What are you working on right now? Anything new happening in the studio?
A: Right now, I'm working on a series of coloured pencil drawings for an upcoming release. They're a continuation of work I started this past winter—medium-sized (18" x 24") drawings on paper. Much of my work the past few years has felt very still, almost slow. I'm trying to convey more movement and energy at the moment, more lines and small, directional shape. I'm also loving the meditative nature of coloured pencil drawing, and the immediacy of it as a medium. Drawing is so direct, right from the brain to the hand to the paper—I just love that.
After a solo show with all new work, it takes a while for my studio to get back to normal operations. I had a solo last year and I just recently got that sense of release (and relief!). Getting my oils out and practicing my observational painting skills helps me ground and recentre my practice on what's important. So the scent of turpentine is back in the air!
