Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers

Grace Rosario Perkins: My name's Grace Rosario Perkins and I'm an artist. I'm a self-taught painter and I'm currently based in New York. I live in Brooklyn.

I made this in 2023, and most of the material was collected from the ICU waiting room while my uncle was dying. And almost everything in there is kind of a relationship to that time. So it's really just one that's kind of like I had to make it to kind of move the energy of grief. There's a mirror on it, there's datura seeds, there's fake eyelashes. Everything kind of comes together and sometimes it doesn't work. I pull things out. And that's kind of how the paintings are built too, is I actually will paint over something entirely or I will scribble over something or I will cut something up. And I think also just with painting and being a painter, over time you learn a language. And I have a language down now. I think after many years of just painting, I used to just doodle and now I'm like, oh, I make these crazy paintings. But it's like the language of abstraction is one that just builds naturally and it's just about intuition and trust and your body. I think art making is spell making. And to make an image and to imbue it with different materials, there's no doubt in my mind that it is a spell.

Narrator: This work, which has a long title, is called Now I’m Makin Money and It’s Good To Be Single, To Mingle With the Ladies While Their Earrings Jingle. It’s an abstract mixed-media painting and is square, measuring just about 67 by 67 inches. The most defined shape within the composition is a grey four-pointed star, positioned just left of the center with each point stopping around a foot from the edge of the canvas. Above the left point, Perkins has painted the words “Part One” in white and grey lettering. Upon first glance, the work seems to be made using only acrylic paint and spray paint, evoking street graffiti–an artform that Perkins draws inspiration from. However, up close, more materials emerge, such as horsehair, fake eyelashes, paper, rose petals, mirror, datura seeds, sand, and bubble packaging. Perkins layers these pieces of personal ephemera and the natural world with the paint to create what she describes as a “grief painting”.

Grace Rosario Perkins: I made this in 2023, and most of the material was collected from the ICU waiting room while my uncle was dying. And so I, kind of as an anxiety thing, collected a lot of these pamphlets and put them into the work. And almost everything in there is kind of a relationship to that time. So it's really just one that's kind of like I had to make it to kind of move the energy of grief.

Narrator: The brushstrokes and spray paint all over this painting have a free and active quality to them. They move attention throughout the composition, mimicking the way Perkins is speaking about moving the energy of grief around. There is no negative space in the work, and instead multiple smaller stars, in yellows, blacks, purples, and reds, fill in the canvas. The stars overlap with abstract shapes and lines, coming in and out of obfuscation as if in motion. Diagonal from the “Part One”, under the left point of the main star, Perkins has layered a yellowed envelope with the words “I love you” scrawled in all caps. 

Grace Rosario Perkins: The “I love You” envelope was actually given to me by my niece. We were driving the car home from the hospital.

Narrator: The seeds layered in the work come from the poisonous datura plant, which has been used by Indigenous tribes in practical and ritual contexts throughout history. The inclusion of these seeds is significant, connecting to Perkins’ identity as an Indigenous woman.

Grace Rosario Perkins: This is a piece that I made in 2023. So all of the images on the background are flowers. My dad's tribe is Akimel O'odham, which is in the Sonoran desert and central Arizona, parts of Mexico. These are all petroglyphs that were flowers on my dad's land that I collected off the internet. There's a very important thing in broader terms called the Flower World. 

Narrator: The Flower World is a complex belief system created by Indigenous people in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest that included visual language, record-keeping, spiritual narratives, and social orders. 

Grace Rosario Perkins: When I was reading about it, it's just like a poetic space where they talk about chromatism, color, flowers. One thing that I really liked when I was reading something was I learned that one of the words in my dad's language, I think music translates to flowers for your ears. And I thought that was really beautiful. 

I'm in herb school and we talk about plants as the ultimate level of consciousness. Humans are here and we talk, and then there's animals and those are great relational things to have. But then to be really in communion and relationship with plants is something that's extremely important, extremely valuable. They're the greatest teachers. It's like honoring flowers as holy things, which they totally are.