Peggy Blood
- Michael Hanna
- May 27
- 2 min read
Peggy Blood is a contemporary painter with a background as an art administrator at Savannah State University who has exhibited around the world in North and South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Her most recent exhibitions include CICA Museum in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, Edgar Negret Museum in Bogota, Columbia, Museum of Architecture and Design in Buenos Aires, Harmony Gallery in Shanghai, Kerala Museum in Kochi, India, Vanaras Hindu University, and Kolkata Museum of Modern Art. Additionally, Peggy’s art has been featured by the U.S. State Department at embassies in Liberia, Ethiopia, Austria, and the United States.
Steeped in a methodical process, Peggy Blood’s paintings can sometimes take months to execute as she waits for the overlaying textures to communicate a sense of form which convey what she describes as ‘fragmentary passages’. The paintings have a distinctive Georgia aura upon them, from the warm color schematics of peach-like colors to regionally-based flowers to depictions of Savannah’s historical architecture. Peggy shifts back and forth between representation and textural abstractions which convey emotional impulses and often depicts abstracted forms which resemble textiles and tree bark. These recurring themes may be symbolic representations of people interacting with nature and their community.
Ranging from joyous colors to muted, pale tones, Peggy commands a nuanced palette which also often contains dripping forms as if her subject matter were melting in the sweltering Georgia heat or perhaps conveying darker, mysterious themes. Her artworks are based on sensory and emotional experiences throughout her life and convey a measurement of time through spatial intervals between planes which symbolically represent a cultured and educated lifestyle during her career in academia and arts administration. As a result, these works could be described as narrative-based because of their reflection on Peggy’s personal life. The complexities in the texture and forms reveal a deep nuance towards fleeting memories of places, people, events, time, and space.
Saturday Morning (pictured above) depicts what appears to be an assemblage of attire or textile-like forms. These recurring themes of textiles in Peggy’s paintings reveal a sense of correlation to character. Fiber material and attire represent a sense of personality as well as personal history through quilted trades and the connection to our bodies. In a sense, the piece could be described as figurative without depicting the figure. The deep blue color schematic infused with strategic coloring throughout the composition conveys complexities of sensory experiences.
Peggy Blood represents one of the finest artists Georgia has to offer. Her distinctive narrative and experience-based art through symbolic representations of textiles, bark, and textural abstractions reveals a complexity in visual communication. Considering her works sometimes take months to complete, these textural forms represent a complexity in contemplation of how paint can be molded to express and illuminate Peggy’s poetic inclinations and philosophical discourse on contemporary aesthetics. A deeply complex painter, Peggy Blood’s long career in the arts become cultivated in these fine compositions which convey a variety of symbolic experiences and fleeting moments of memory.
