BY CATE McQUAID
BOSTON GLOBE
NOV. 1, 2007
Anne Peretz’s gorgeous, athletic landscape paintings of the outer Cape are not pretty. Rather, they grapple with the ruthlessness of the land and the possibilities of paint. Her show at Pepper Gallery features confrontations with monumental dunes. “Balston Dune #3” rises over the viewer in a variety of beiges, and wonderful textures. Watery washes reveal the canvas’s weave; other passages look spackled on. The blue sky is as substantial as the sand.
Smaller works have more pictorial detail, but it seems almost incidental to Peretz’s engagement with her paint. She stumbles, streaks, and pushes it around in “Truro Pond #1,” where foreground reeds rise like licks of flame under the blunt horizontals of tree branches. She brings an Abstract Expressionist’s passion for the materiality of paint to landscapes.
