Copyright 2001 by Edward Willett

Wilf Perrault's art is among the most immediately recognizable work by any Regina artist. His landscapes capture, not the countryside, but the back alleys of this city and others, alleys where trees, bushes, power poles, fences, garages, puddles and snow come together to create unexpected beauty.

Until recently, Wilf created his art in a small studio in Miller Collegiate, where a long row of windows provided light and a view outside and the door was always open for students and staff to drop in. But now Wilf has moved into a spacious new studio, formerly used by fellow Regina artist Joe Fafard, and last Thursday several people, myself included, visited it as part of the MacKenzie Art Gallery's Twilight Tours.

The new studio is quite different from the space at Miller, not only in size, but in design: it has no windows at all, only skylights of frosted glass atop rectangular wells lined with silvery Mylar to diffuse the light. And, of course, staff and students can no longer drop by at any moment.

"I close the door and have no sense of what's going on out there," Wilf says. "It's kind of like a sanctuary."

Within that sanctuary, Wilf continues to mine the endless possibilities of back alleys. His currently in-progress paintings, mostly intended for a show at the Susan Whitney gallery in September, are what he calls "nocturnals"; they're all set within an hour or two of sunset, with skies ranging from glowing pink and orange to deep blue with just a hint of light still clinging to the horizon.

Despite having painted so many back alleys over the years, Wilf says he continues to enjoy painting them; in fact, he enjoys them more and more.

Wilf's training was actually in sculpture (which he still creates; he built the grasshopper at the corner of Albert Street and Leopold Crescent, for instance) and his initial paintings were mostly abstract. But when he first moved to Regina from Saskatoon he decided he wanted to paint his new community. He first looked at the major landmarks, such as the Legislative Buildings, but they didn't interest him as an artist.

Instead, he was initially drawn to the reflections in puddles--many of which were found in back alleys. As he worked on capturing those reflections, however, his eye was drawn higher, and he saw the "wonderful landscapes" of the back alleys.

Although a back alley is an urban landscape, Wilf points out, it's also a prairie landscape, with the single-point perspective we see every time we drive down a Saskatchewan highway--the road disappearing to a single point on the horizon.

Besides, he says, "No one else is doing it, so I don't have to think about what other people are painting!"

Sometimes the back alleys in Wilf's paintings are recognizable--sometimes they're not. That's because, although he starts with lots of reference photos, he's by no means bound to what they show. "I add a lot of stuff," he says. "I used to follow the photos, trying to get relatively close, but it was very restrictive--so I just make it up." (Among other things, he removes the unsightly garbage dumpsters that actually line most back alleys.) He compares the process to canoeing: "Once I get into the stream, I've kicked off the shore and I'm on my own. I can't depend on the photo."

He works in acrylic, first spraying background colors to create his wonderful skies, then "drawing with paint" to create the foreground and details. He uses liquid latex to block particular areas of the painting from the spray--windows, puddles, snowbanks, etc.

He used to work on only one painting at a time, he says, but on a trip to Australia, he changed his habits, working on one piece only until he felt he was "spinning wheels," then starting another. This way, he finds, he stays fresh all the time.

It might seem that it would be difficult to keep several paintings unique, working on them all at once, but Wilf compares paintings to small children; they become independent as they grow up, each taking on their own individual character.

His painting style has changed over time, he says; he thinks it's a bit smoother now than it used to be. "I'm more interested now in the light," he explains. "Wherever you go, if you can control the light, you can amek something really special. With light, you can control people's eyes."

Says Wilf, "That's what I try to do. I'm playing with light."

Posted September 22, 2004