Doing art for public projects is a great honor, says Galina Perova, a Russian-born artist, who now lives and works in Salt Lake City.
Although her art has traveled and been exhibited internationally, she is also proud of works that have been designed to stay in one place, murals incorporated into building designs that let the public come to them. One of these projects is a "History of Health Sciences in Utah" mural that now graces the Spencer F. and Cleone P. Eccles Health Science Education Building at the University of Utah.
Another is her recent mural project that will be installed in the new 5th District Courthouse in St. George.
"To have such exposure, to be included in such an important institution like a courthouse — that's a big honor," Perova says.
But it is also a big responsibility. In painting public works, you are speaking for the people, she says, "and what you have to say for them is very important."
Perova's latest murals trace the history of the St. George area from the beginning. There are two themes, she says, the importance of nature, and the history of human interaction.
She starts with early native people, represented by petroglyphs and other remnants of early culture. She traces the arrival of the first Europeans, with the Spanish fathers of the Escalante-Dominguez Expedition.
Then, "with the pioneers, came a new culture, a new religion, a new kind of civilization. This gave rise to factories and mills. But any society must have law and order, so there is the first courthouse, the first sheriff," she says.
She depicts George A. Smith who gave his name to the city. She ends with a modern family of tourists. "That's kind of like a circle of life — from the covered wagon to the RV. People have been coming here all these years for many reasons."
This human history plays out against a backdrop of nature. "There's a lot of beauty in the flora and fauna and in the cliffs and mountains."
The mountains are her "leitmotif" for the whole mural, she says, the recurring image that unites the whole.
That's one of the challenges art on such a grand scale, she says. Paintings that are spread over a three-story area must exist individually, but also must work together. "A mural is not simply a big painting. It represents symbiosis between architecture and painting."
Perova has worked on the project for a year or so. One of her first steps was to visit the area and paint a variety of landscapes. That gave her a color palette, she says, which also had to match the color palette of materials used in the building."
She also incorporates some subtle symbolism into the work. Perhaps the years she spent growing up in Soviet Russia give her special insight, but she has a deep appreciation for the courts. "The court in any society is there to punish but also to protect."
When she came to the courthouse section, her palette switched from the colors of the desert to the colors of justice, "the black and white, the yes or no. The court must decide what is right and what is wrong."
Perova created the mural on large wooden frames. The canvases will eventually be removed and glued to the walls, with the seams between them smoothed out to make the whole. And she hopes that those who see it will gain an added appreciation for both human and natural history.
Murals are not all that Perova does. Her works cover the gamut from portraits (she did the official portrait of Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, and one of a president of the World Bank, among others) to still life to landscape and even abstraction.
Although she admits to a secondary passion for cooking, Perova has spent her life in art.
"Tryin' to study art in Russia is a long process," she says. "You have to start at an early age."
She demonstrated enough talent that by age 11, she was admitted to a school for gifted children. At 19, she was recognized by Anatoli Znak, one of Russia's prominent painters, and with his mentoring, completed a month-long competitive examination that required work in several media, such as drawing, painting and sculpture.
In 1980, she was selected for a six-year program at the elite Repin Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. There she earned a master's degree and was chosen by the Academy of Arts to pursue her doctorate, "an extremely rare and prestigious" honor.
Since 1988, her works have traveled with the World Wide International tour of Russian painters; in 1989, her works were exhibited at the New York Academy of Art.
It was through that connection that she met a sponsor who invited her to come to Utah, where she exhibited at the Utah Museum of Fine Art and got a teaching position at the U.
After teaching for three years, Perova decided to return to work at her private studio in Salt Lake in 1991.
She loves Utah in part because it is a place to connect with mother nature, she says, "and I think mother nature is the best teacher."
But she has also traveled a lot and thinks that exposure to the world also influences her work.
Perova firmly believes that "the kind of artist you are refelcts the kind of human you are. Art reflects your soul, your head, your mind. The bigger your knowledge, the bigger your experience, the more you will have to say, and the more interesting you are as an artist."
Every true artist feels a need to communicate, to share, she says. "I can't say I paint for myself. No artists should say that. We paint for other people — like a poet, like a moviemaker."
And that's why, she says, "I am so very proud to do this mural project."
e-mail: carma@desnews.com