Enoc Perez was born in San Juan in 1967 and received his first painting lessons at the age of eight. The son of an art critic, he spent his family holidays visiting museums in various countries and learning about art history. In 1986, Perez moved to New York to study painting at Pratt Institute before earning his master’s degree at Hunter College. Conflicted with the program at Hunter College, where students and faculty criticized his paintings as overly seductive and decorative, Perez held fast to his belief in the importance of aesthetics and the joy of art. Embracing art’s potential for pleasure and beauty, Perez paints sensual nudes, still lifes, tropical resorts, and modern architectural icons in a simple aesthetic with dazzling, vibrant colors.

He describes his inspiration for his paintings of architectural icons:

“In a sense, these architects really believed in the idea of utopia. There’s a real feeling of believing in these buildings, and when you look at contemporary architecture, that’s not so much the case. The fact that they come from a different era makes them nostalgic. I love painting, and I believe in painting, and I share that with these architects who believed in utopia. Many painters paint to question the medium, which might be perfect for them, but I am one of those who really believe in painting”.

My method came out of a preoccupation with creating paintings that would make sense historically (at least in my mind) with New York painting. When I started to paint in New York, and still today, I felt that Andy Warhol’s paintings were important to artists in New York. So I thought that if I somehow used printmaking in my process, I could have some sort of relationship with history. Then I started to make these drawings and would transfer them to canvas by adding oil paint on the back and then redrawing them on to the canvas, kind of like carbon paper—a printmaking process that I still use today. One of the interesting things about the method is that when layered enough, it produces a sense of decay, like real life. In a way, it contradicts the sense of optimism that the buildings embody. Or my own sense of optimism, even. Maybe making paintings today comes through as an act of optimism since painting has been declared dead almost every year for decades. And that desire to move forward with it may parallel the aspirations of this type of architecture.

Source: Byrnes, Mark. Enoc Perez: The Andy Warhol of Architecture, Dwell, January 16, 2013