I met Alan Peckolick at his openings at Atlantic and ArtSpace Galleries both on West 29th Street (in the same building) and had a much better time than I expected.  Was busy trying to finish up some work as I have Jury Duty to do in Kings County on Wednesday and found one show - his, that was right down the block;  a couple of conversations and glasses of wine later, here I am.

 Checker 30 x 40 acrylic on canvas  by Alan Peckolick

Besides enjoying the lettering and font work - the colors were wonderful and had real feeling - the kind of stuff that painting, for me, is made for.   I asked Alan a few questions and got back a couple of answers that I’ll briefly go into here.

Alan Peckolick has been a graphic designer for some time, but reinvented himself into a painter, and a fine one.  Alan distinguishes graphic design/illustration as solving someone else’s problem while painting is solving your own (the artist’s) problem.  Interesting.

There’s a lot of layering, the paintings were done in acrylic and all by hand; Alan started with photographs 95% of the time when he first began painting in 1998 or 1999 (don’t remember for sure which year it was).  Now, Alan Peckolick uses photos 5% of the time and imagination for the rest.

When is a painting done?  When he can’t think of anything else to do in the painting.  Alan said he’s selling his work because he’s running out of room in his studio to store the paintings  - and, it appears several of his paintings were already sold when I arrived to his openings at Atlantic Gallery and ArtSpace Gallery.

There were several admirers of Peckolick present and while the galleries were not crowded when I arrived, I sensed that there were serious art lovers among those present and I spoke to a few of them - that’s how I know for sure.

I notice that Peckolick’s paintings are “finished”; every part is worked to a certain level - much as I feel I treat my own work - it’s more a state of mine really.   Like I said, I enjoyed looking at Alan Peckolick’s paintings and speaking both to the artist, his gallery dealers and several of those who attended the openings.