Peter Paone, Flowering Surprise

At first glance, Paone’s subjects often appear to be recognizable still life elements, but on closer inspection, they reveal themselves to be entirely imagined entities. A vase might be the body of a squid, or the petal of a flower might be the wing of a moth. His imaginative compositions began with a childhood experience. “When I was maybe six or seven years old, my father took me to a park. You have to remember, growing up in South Philadelphia, there were no trees. The only trees were fig trees. So we went to this park and I saw this white bush. I had never seen a white bush before. As I approached this bush, it all flew away. They were all white moths or butterflies. The whole thing just flew away. That was probably my first surreal experience.”