HILARY PECIS

Pecis has become known for her vivid depictions of the Southern California landscape, richly patterned still lifes, and scenes from the interiors and exteriors that populate her life. For this solo presentation, the artist has created a group of new works that focus more acutely on pattern, decoration, and the layering of these elements in domestic spaces, covering the entirety of each surface with sensuously bold colour and form.

In a recent painting that depicts a living room scene at Christmas time, Pecis showcases her distinct methods of material patterning. Here, striated line work representing wood grains on the floor, ceiling, chairs, and various wood trim highlights the artist’s intricately layered painting process, where linework first gets applied in an underlayer and is then painstakingly redrawn at a later stage, turning these naturally occurring motifs on functional objects into decorative or ornamental features in their own right. Pecis mixes each color in the moment and is not reliant on a formula, meaning each application of pigment has the capacity to yield a unique result. While the paintings themselves are two-dimensional, the artist utilises every surface in the compositions as an opportunity for further embellishment.

The artist’s process begins by collecting compelling images—mainly on her phone—and culling through her albums to methodically select pictures or arrange specific components that will find their way into a painting. Because Pecis foregoes any preliminary sketches and is often working on multiple canvases at once—each of which is at various stages of completion—this patchwork of imagery also captures a particular moment in time, where certain themes emerge, and the colors or tones may be repeated throughout the other works in progress.

In Sharon Flowers (2024)—one of the few depictions of a public space in this grouping—Pecis utilises elements from movements like Pattern and Decoration by combining man-made systems of structure (bricks, tiles, windowpanes, and a trellis) with organic geometric patterns like flower blossoms and veined leaves to decorate the surface of the eponymous storefront. Flowers are a subject Pecis continues to explore as they combine key themes prevalent in the P&D movement—natural symmetric designs, exuberant colours, and lush layering—but also in the ways in which they bridge the gap between fine art and craft. Moreover, Pecis’s work touches on a long lineage of P&D’s relationship to feminism, as many of the patterns depicted stem from craft traditions more commonly associated with women. Here, the grid of individual flowers on the storefront’s window panels could just as easily live as a quilt, tapestry, or tablecloth.

While the Pattern and Decoration movement began in New York, Pecis’s interpretation feels specific to Southern California with the vibrancy of tones and depiction of plants that are native to arid climates. The P&D artists incorporated more mathematically precise lines and forms, whereas Pecis’s paintings maintain an expressive, hand-drawn quality that leaves room for surprising juxtaposition which—while flat on the canvas—warps the viewer’s perspective. Many of the works on view depict a fixed foreground and background, but this distinction gets blurred and slightly abstracted through the layering of materials, furniture, and pattern on top of pattern. In an almost collage-like process, Pecis’s paintings equalise the materials in her compositions by flattening the forms and saturating the colour, relying more on shapes to create depth and dimension, rather than the incorporation of shadow and directional light.

As a grouping, the paintings on view honour decoration and the artful elements that surround us in daily life. Whether because the patterns depicted represent a significant place and time for the artist, or because Pecis is drawn to certain aesthetic qualities, equal attention is paid to patterns that emerge randomly, like the leaves on a tree, and more planned or intentional sequences like a gridded pattern on a rug. While people aren’t the central focus of the paintings on view, there’s an overarching sense that the beauty and depth of each image are a direct result of the subtle encounters that make up social life.