PRG is thrilled to announce a two-person exhibition in February of paintings from Danny Perkins and glass sculpture from Richard Royal.

“Parallel” is curated around the transformative effects of light on color. Perkins & Royal, longtime friends who met in the early days of Pilchuck Glass School, each explore & stretch the inherent qualities of their respective mediums. Perkins exploits the transparency & reflection achieved with the use of resin to increase the impact of his beautiful abstract color field paintings. Throughout Royal’s glass career, he has mastered an ability to manipulate the formal characteristics of glass to emphasize the movement of light through shape & color.

Danny Perkins has been working with the dichotomies of color and form for more than 35 years now, first as an internationally renowned glass artist working in three dimensions and now as a painter. Perkins’ paintings have a conversation with the tradition of Abstract Expressionist color fieldwork and the expressive power of color. Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, color holds emotions, memories, cultural significance, and experiential associations.

A foundational path was set for Perkins by growing up in a missionary orphanage on the Cherokee nation. This institutional upbringing fostered individuality and a feeling of never being a part of anything. Nature provided Perkins with a grounded silence, a romantic wonder that shaped his place in the world. Quiet moments alone looking at fields or the ocean gave him comfort and a sense of belonging. This is what Perkins’ paintings aim to capture–a knowingness that other people feel the same sense of isolation and an invitation that art can be an entrance into sharing our lives.

Perkins and Royal met while working in the early 80s at Pilchuck Glass School, located north of Seattle, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. Between the two artists, they’ve worked with creative powerhouses such as Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Paul Marioni, Benjamin Moore, Billy Morris, Henry Suma, and Lino Tagliapietra, among others. Perkins and Royal have glass works that are in countless prominent collections across the world.

Richard Royal, a native of the Northwest and resident of Seattle, is recognized internationally as one of the most skilled and talented glassblowers in the studio glass movement. His sensitivity and natural affinity towards the material reveal themselves within his extensive body of work. He has worked with glass for more than 40 years and “Parallel” is a sampling of pieces over that period.

Royal’s artistic approach combines sensuality, fluidity, and bold abundance to deliver gracefully attenuated pieces that speak of their own elegance and sculptural verticality. He has always worked with intention and originality, creating objects that reflect his vocabulary of techniques. Acclaimed for these complex and difficult skills, Royal has always been mindful of exhibiting the inherent qualities of glass, and often his completed works reference the history of their own making. The artistic vulnerability and authenticity in Royal’s sculptural work are through lines across all his various explorations of form and color.