Drawing as Ritual

VISUAL ART Peter Cox brings Caravaggio’s strobe-lights and shadows into the 21st century CARRIE SCOZZARO

Peter Cox is an alchemist. He doesn’t just draw or paint; he conjures figures out of paper and canvas. Cox has such mastery of technique that whatever he’s creating — from a simple figure study for a torso to the nearly 7-foottall “Atalou,” with its androgynous, masked warrior figure — you can easily forget you’re looking at a two-dimensional image.

His paintings don’t seem merely historical; they make it seem as if Cox has actually been there. When he paints a figure, you can feel its presence. You can sense, for example, the weight of arms stretched overhead in “Female with Feather,” a nearly monochromatic pastel-on-masonite rendering of Cox’s wife. If you mirror the position while looking at this piece, you can feel it viscerally, how the hip

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Detail of Woman with Feather


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Carrie Scozzaro

Carrie Scozzaro has made a living and a life with art: teaching it, making it and writing about it since her undergrad days at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of Art. Her writing can be found in back editions of Big Sky Journal, Kootenai Mountain Culture, Sandpoint Magazine, WSU Magazine, and Western Art & Architecture...