BOSTON, MASS.- Peri Schwartz uses her studio as her subject matter. In the studio, she creates stage sets using books, bottles, and the architecture of the space. She is constantly arranging, re-arranging, adding, and subtracting from her still life throughout each painting. In the catalog that accompanies the exhibition, Lauren P. Della Monica, curator, writes about Schwartz’s compositions. “In some of the work, the bottles and jars are the subject, their blocks of color creating the composition. In the Studio paintings, they provide a sense of scale within the larger room, defining the center of the canvas. Often the bottles and jars are merely suggested—objects in space with their ghostly details intentionally left undone, having been moved again and again.”

Even within the formality of the work, Schwartz creates life and exuberance. Della Monica continues,

"The work feels architectural and yet exudes a sense of joy and warmth, visually defining her studio as a place of creativity and passion. In the Studio paintings, Schwartz provides a glimpse of the natural world through the window at left. The paintings hint at an exterior world in a subdued palette of sand, gray, and green that is tonally at odds with the elation of the jewel-toned painting studio. The foregrounds of these paintings are filled with abstract shapes created by the constant rearranging of books. The density towards the front of the canvas thrusts the viewer into the scene, as if the viewer becomes the artist surveying her studio."

Peri Schwartz’s work can be found in many public and museum collections including the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.