By Mary Voelz Chandler

April 20 , 2007

Santiago Perez is a pilgrim on the trail of the fantastical, an intense, driven artist who creates paintings that toy with the surreal and require a leap of faith to dissect.

That is what makes the work of this prolific artist so engaging, so intriguing to decipher and so difficult to dismiss - especially in terms of a suite of works on view this month at Sandy Carson Gallery.

Perez lived in Colorado for years while in the Air Force in Colorado Springs, and became only more rapid-fire when he retired seven years ago to a small town in New Mexico. All along, though, he has pulled from the genius of Dutch and Flemish painters such as Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who relied on mystery and imagination to stun their viewers. Heaven and Hell and a raucous Earth filled their works, just as wizards, queens and animated beasts have populated Perez's canvases. Sometimes he has ventured into the West, but for the most part, Perez has found his subjects in another world.

That holds true for "The Ship of Fools, Including Mergatroids, Pirxes, Big Heads, and the Egg-laying Man," where the concept is a narrative that addresses the madness of power and the power of madness. The artist's allegory is flexible, but the figures - a bunch of heads that move on their own, creatures that look like blackbirds or platypus/bird mixes, a man who lays eggs and more - inhabit backgrounds that mix an impossible earth with a glowing sea to tell a story that is, well, convoluted.

Perez has provided text panels to help us connect the dots, and the paintings are not arranged in the order in which he places the action. Also, his surfaces are more flat and less textured than in the past.

But frankly, when the climax is Moby Dick vs. Quetzalcoatl Meet in Heaven for a Million Rounds, who is going to quibble? This giant-sized painting plumbs numerous cultures - including, certainly, pop - and is supported by an intricate structure that includes a flat underlay of comic-book style skulls, a partial border of blackbirds in dunce caps, and a giant tree that shelters the entire over-the-top vision of someplace far away and yet like modern life.

Perez has taken a step into a new level of complexity, and the result impresses as much as it disarms.

Carson gallery director William Biety has paired another type of fantasy with Perez's show, works inspired by a different type of voyage: Caroline Douglas' trip to Morocco.

Douglas, who lives in Boulder, has built a reputation on sculptural work, mostly small, that involves human and animal figures created in a rough-hewn, elaborately glazed fashion. The installation "Entering the Dream" includes some of that, but is more focused on large figural pieces in which Douglas uses a bright white porcelain slip to mark the faces of salt- or soda-fired stoneware in finely detailed costumes.

The Moroccan influence is clear in her inclusion of camels as the animals that are part of this work, as is the lush glazing of the costuming that cover her subjects. And birds play a role, especially in work that includes a partial figure perched on a "skirt" of metal rings that support numerous winged creatures.

But the more simple Ritual is the stand-out here, in bands of glowing golds and greens that suggest the heat and spice of a day at market.