Ghostprint Gallery

Last week, I was in Richmond for dinner with my parents to celebrate my dad's birthday.  Richmond has a very vibrant art scene, and my mom loves going to the galleries and taking art classes.  There are lots of galleries that have sprung up on Broad Street, and mom knows the owners of a lot of them.  They have an event on the first Friday of the month where the galleries all have an open house, a lot of times to showcase a new exhibition.  A couple of them have started having artist preview receptions the night before.

Ghostprint Gallery is the one we visited for their artist preview with Juan Perdiguero.  He was there for preview, and was very interesting to talk with.  He is from Madrid, Spain, and also teaches an art class at SUNY, so he splits his time between the 2 places.  This collection is called Perros Indalo.  He studied and photographed the dogs in Spain during an international artists residency he participated in.

The artwork was amazing.  Juan explained to us how he created these gorgeous pieces.  The backgrounds were part of the photograph that he took, just blown up really large to focus on one aspect of the background.  So he first puts the photo paper on the canvas to highlight the background - the one below was the center of a flower that was in the original photograph. 

So then he takes ink and makes the outline and full shape of the dog.  Then, this is the amazing part.  He uses paper towels to rub and remove the ink to make the dogs face.  So it starts completely dark, and he ends up with these incredibly detailed pieces.  The eyes were beautiful - and the expressions that the dogs have!  We were joking that one was waiting for food, and one was probably getting his back scratched, and another wanted to play...

While these pictures are cool, they really don't show the beauty as seeing them in person did.  The one below is my favorite - I just love the expression and his ears!

My parents love dogs as much as I do, and we really fell in love with this artist and his work.  I hope you've enjoyed a little piece of the exhibit!  This show is on display until May 26 at the gallery - if you're in Richmond, go see it!


All of the photographs are from the Ghostprint Gallery website.