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Norman Perryman grew up surrounded by the Worcestershire countryside, so it was natural that his early work consisted mainly of landscapes. A year painting in southern France in 1963 provided the inspiration for hundreds of landscapes, often containing groups of figures. During the seventies work in oils was generally replaced by watercolours. But there always seemed to be a relationship with music or dance.
The composer Elgar once said - “you can hear music in the countryside”.
But Perryman could also see it. In France, Switzerland or Holland, he would search for diagonal compositions of figures, shapes and silhouettes that could dance across his canvas, the diagonal expressing energy, dance or musical rhythm. A sweeping mountain range often seemed like a movement from a symphony. Ragged olive tree branches were like bursts of musical energy - their leaves a delicate twittering sound. The black twisted vines of the Provence sounded like the bass-section in a wild passage from Stravinsky. In Holland the low-lying farms, cows and willows, stretched on the horizon as misty blobs between heaven and earth, created a delicate line to be played as a muted woodwind rhythm. As in Asian paintings, Perryman has often placed the emphasis on that line and allowed the rest of the painting to fade away.
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In 1966 The Hague Binnenhof newspaper singled out this characteristic at one of his early exhibitions: “Perryman has certainly achieved something exceptional with the unusual compositional device of concentrating people... musicians on a diagonal line. Things hang or stand on that line, capricious, but firmly anchored. Contours fade and reappear from one moment to the next... pure gossamer drawing in paint, set in a spacious white world”. |
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GALLERY |
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Birmingham canal
1953 |
Skiers disappearing over hill top
1966
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Woodcutters in the snow
1963 |
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Windmills at Zaandijk
1962 |
Village in Valais
1969 |
Vineyard near Leysin
1971 |
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Lakeshore at Weggis
1965 |
Weggis - Vierwaldstättersee
1966 |
Altstadt Bern
1970 |
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Landscape in la Camargue
1973 |
Dutch winter landscape
1980 |
Friesland with sheep
1978 |
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Autumn earth colours above Poilly-Chablis
1985 |
Burgundy landscape
1984 |
American farm, Michigan
1981 |
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Old houseboats on the Seine |
Winter farm near Geneva
1978 |
Jagershage, Brabant winter
1981 |
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Ferme La Liberte, Chablis
1984 |
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