Norman Perryman : artist

"I know of no other artist who can catch the essential movement and meaning of an artist’s playing motion and gestures, no one who can capture them as well as Norman Perryman. This collection is a tribute to his life-long dedication to translate music into colour and line. In this way he translates not only the playing of the artist but even the music that is being played. "


		In the early sixties Norman Perryman spent many hours at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, Switzerland sketching great musicians such as cellist Paul Tortelier, pianist Wilhelm Kempff, the legendary sitar-player Ravi Shankar, and of course Yehudi Menuhin himself and his pianist sisters Hephzibah and Yaltah Menuhin. Later, the list came to include the youthful violinist Nigel Kennedy, pianist Melvyn Tan and cellist Colin Carr, then all students at the Menuhin School. In 1975 he painted the great French cellist Pierre Fournier. When the splendid new Symphony Hall was built in 1991 in Birmingham, England, Perryman was commissioned by the Director (Andrew Jowett) to create a collection of large watercolours (unframed 32 x 22 inches or 84 x 56cm) of the great personalities booked to perform there. In ten years this unique collection grew to over twenty-five paintings and now includes conductors Riccardo Chailly, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Giulini, Bernard Haitink, Alexander Lazarev, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Sakari Oramo, Simon Rattle and Klaus Tennstedt; violinists Sarah Chang, Kyung-Wha Chung, Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zuckerman; cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Mstislav Rostropovich and Paul Tortelier; pianists Vladimir Ashkenazy and Alfred Brendel; Thomas Allen (baritone), Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo soprano), José Carreras (tenor), Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), Jessye Norman (soprano), and Luciano Pavarotti (tenor); and Evelyn Glennie (percussion). More recent paintings currently in the artist’s own collection include conductors Georg Solti (1912 -1997), Yakov Kreizberg (1959 - 2011) and Leonard Slatkin; violinist Julia Fischer.

Cecilia Bartoli
mezzo-soprano

José Carreras
tenor

Valery Gergiev
conductor

Kiri Te Kanawa
soprano

Yo-Yo Ma
cellist

Kurt Masur
conductor

Yehudi Menuhin
violinist

Jessye Norman
soprano

Luciano Pavarotti
tenor

Georg Solti
conductor

Plácido Domingo
conducting Carmen

Mstislav Rostropovich
cellist

Julia Fischer
violinist

Yakov Kreizberg
conductor

Sakari Oramo
conductor

Alfred Brendel
pianist

Perryman writes:

“In this series, my aim is to combine my experience in portraiture with my passion for music, to create paintings which are not merely celebrity portraits, but which make you feel you can hear the music. The background colors and forms, the abstract calligraphic rhythms in the paint and the gestures of movement and performance in these works, are therefore all just as important as the portrait.

Music, movement and watercolor have something in common. The floating trans-parent qualities of watercolor can suggest the transient, elusive nature of music and the illusion of movement, with a range of expression from the most delicate tones to tremendous energy and power. The inspired spontaneity with which one paints a good watercolor is very much like the way you perform music, with all the inherent risks. My essential source of inspiration in each of these pictures is the music, but other influences are Zen watercolor painting and some of the great American watercolorists.

The great performers portrayed were very happy with my paintings of them in action. Yehudi Menuhin, who knew my work very well and owned several paintings, once said at the opening of one of my exhibitions: "Perryman is a musician, who makes music with his paintbrush". That summarizes what I’m about pretty well. It was Maestro Kurt Masur who suggested that I take this work on tour. Jessye Norman sat for an hour signing prints of her painting for admirers, and word has it that Kiri Te Kanawa had a dress made like the one I invented for her painting.

I’ve somehow developed an ability to empathize intensely with all of my subjects and to identify with their musical interpretations. I would like to thank each of the great musicians who have, sometimes unwittingly, inspired and moved me to paint from the heart and to give form to these wonderful musical experiences”.

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