At 72″ x 63”, “Cakes with Watermelon and Éclair” offers more than a mouthful of delights with frosting dripping off an array of cakes, most cut open to reveal their layers, cream oozing from an éclair. Comparable in size is “Plates with Oysters, Lobsters, Fish, Sandwiches, and Charcuterie,” a veritable feast where fruits and olives are squeezed between overflowing plates. As large as some of these canvases are, Pedro manages to fill much of the space with food, flowers, and assorted odds and ends.
“Paint Table with Flowers, Sandwich, Cake and Croc,” is a 92” x 90” still life that brings together the various visual themes of the show. In the painting, the largest from this show, a table is cluttered with art supplies, clothing items, including a Croc shoe, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Adding to this collection of stuff is an assortment of fruit—pomegranate, grapes, and citrus amongst them—a slice of pink frosted cake with a raspberry on top, a small bouquet, and a sandwich layered vegetables, meat, and cheese.
While working on “Table, Fruits, Flowers and Cakes” (which ran at The Hole between February and April of 2023) Pedro debated what he should paint on the largest canvas for the show. Perhaps he would paint a bouquet or maybe a pile of fruit with a bouquet. Then he had a revelation: “Why don’t I do something decadent that all reverts back to the studio process?”
He refers to “Paint Table with Flowers, Sandwich, Cake, and Croc” as the “key” to the show’s imagery. “A lot of the other subjects in the show reflect that table,” he says.
It’s also a return to an earlier series of paintings that Pedro made.
About five years ago, back when he was working out of his garage, Pedro was trying to figure out what he wanted to paint when a neighbor suggested that his table stacked with paints would make a good subject. Pedro liked that idea and, he says, people liked the finished piece. That led to one of the first series of paintings weaving in and out of his body of work over the years that followed. Yet, by the time he was preparing for The Hole show, it had been a year or two since he last painted this type of still life.
“I like to go back and revisit the subjects that I haven’t done in a while to keep it fresh in my head, so that I can feel like I’m coming at it from a new perspective after I’ve worked,” Pedro says. “Say I’ve painted a bunch of bowls of fruit or something for a while. I’ll stop doing that for a minute, go back to something that I’ve done maybe two years ago (subject-wise), and have a new, fresh look at it.”
EVEN A TABLE I FEEL LIKE HAS A LITTLE BIT OF A LIFE FORM.”
Less than a decade ago, Pedro moved from New York to Los Angeles, which made an impact on his art. “Everything in my New York world was crumbling,” he says. “The gallery that I was working with was going under. The studio that I was working in, I was getting kicked out of, but then I was getting this chunk of lawsuit money, so I was like, ‘Okay, why don’t I go to Los Angeles?’.”
In Los Angeles, Pedro thought about the styles in which he had worked earlier in his career as he, “tried to figure out, find out, who I was again.”
“It was a nice, quiet place for me to be. I had this little garage. I had this small, little house,” he recalls. “I was able to not have any external influences on what I was doing, really—for the most part. I was able to experiment a bit and circle back to something that I was doing when I first left New York, but just changing the subject around and just switching a few details in terms of stylistically how I was doing it.”
His more recent studio move to a space that’s about a forty minute walk from his home has resulted in some changes as well, aside from the ability to work on more, larger paintings. “It’s been a little bit different because I’m not just rolling out of my back door into this garage. I now have to walk out into the world,” he says, adding that it helps him get some exercise into the day. “The exercise is me getting to the space. That’s more helpful for me.”
Days in the studio change depending on where in his process Pedro is at the moment. “Today, it would be chalking and printing out the designs that I’m working on for the next piece,” he says.