Marvel of Marbles! A Painter's Sleight of Hand

When exhibit designers want to reshape the marble halls of the National Gallery of Art, they turn to one of the most remarkable artists in Washington: Glenn Perry. Trained as a landscape painter, Perry, 54, uses paint to turn ordinary plywood into something indistinguishable from marble. Almost every gallery in the ornate West Building has a baseboard, a panel, a door lintel -- something -- that appears to be marble but isn't. Perry can mimic at least six kinds of the stone. This pedestal, which appears to be a marble cylinder, is, in fact, just one of the gallery's samples of Perry's magical illusions.

Is there a particular trick to doing marble?

There isn't and there is. There is a pattern in the stone. Part of my skill, I guess, is seeing those inorganic patterns and recognizing them. And I think that's transferred from my own personal art, my landscape painting, because, say, when you're painting foliage -- trees, or whatever -- you have to organize it in your mind, simplify it. And in that you can see a pattern and that's what you want. You rendering this overall pattern that you see that is the interaction of these objects. You see that in the stone. In the geological formation of the stone, there are different processes that happen over time, creating contrasting movement within the stone.

I have those patterns in my head.

And of course, you create them by working with transparent and opaque paint, layering of colors -- of course, there's a lot of that layering happening within the stone itself. I fell into it here, I guess, because of my ability to match colors, complex colors that are built of layers. I often apply the paint "wet in wet" and manipulate them, and then I'll soften that with a stipple brush, or a brush or a feather or a piece of crumpled cloth.

The best part of my job? Well, when you've got to make the deadline and you've gotta do it fast and you can't be too fussy about it. To create one of these finishes, it's an improvisation. And to do it quickly and have it be successful, to come up with something that is a great illusion, that is a pleasure.

-- Interview conducted and condensed by John Pancake