Back        “Todd Perley”
“Todd Perley” I have been painting since 1997 when I came up with the concept that is prevalent in most of my work. I remain fascinated by the inextricable integration of our high-tech digital world and how we as mere humans have learned to interact with it.

Perception is a funny thing.

I employ the use of halftone in my paintings, more commonly found digitially constructed by a computer, but my halftone is distorted and exploded to a wild degree. If you look closely at an image printed in a magazine or newspaper you will see it is not made up of lines and shadows; rather, varying dots and line widths, merely implying the subject it represents. Your eyes choose to put these seemingly senseless blips in order and human perception gives this mode its veracity.

All my work is hand-painted. No paint on a canvas nor ink on a silkscreen was put there by anything but a human hand, despite what the end product looks like. I want to take the digital world and bring it back to our analog perceptions. It's a Man v. Machine thang.

My paintings work on a few levels: Up close, they are abstracts. Shapes, lines, dots. Meaningless in their patterns, but pretty, right? From afar, your perception clicks on and you create the image from the few "hints" of paint I have given (and not given) you.

Perception is a funny thing.

I live in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans and would like to continue living here, please. Can someone bring us a new levee? That would be great.