Pierrot

Encaustic and Oil on Wood Panel. Unframed 16"x16" / 40cm x 40cm

Pierrot, by American-Argentinian artist Miguel Perez Lem’s ongoing exploration of memory, longing, and the fragile architectures of the body, the use of a wood panel whose natural grain breathes through the work like an undertone of time. The figure is first built in charcoal, its velvety contours feeling both corporeal and ephemeral. Layers of oil paint lend quiet luminosity, while a final encaustic veil suspends the image in a dreamlike stillness.

In this piece, the gesture carries a soft theatrical melancholy. The reference to Pierrot—the archetypal sad clown of commedia dell’arte—introduces a narrative of vulnerability and the quiet beauty of sorrow worn without disguise. The carefully cropped figure, partially revealed and partially withheld, mirrors this emotional duality: open yet guarded, expressive yet silent.

Along the panel’s edge, Perez Lem inscribes lyrics from “Collar de Perlas” by Alfonso Esparza Oteo. The line, “Yo quiero hacerte con mis lágrimas un collar de perlas, déjame llorar ya que hoy te perdí,” loosely translated as “I want to make you a necklace of pearls from my tears; let me weep, because today I lost you,” becomes the emotional spine of the piece. The words inhabit the composition, giving voice to its tender ache.

Subtle marks on the body—gestural or symbolic—serve as emotional annotations, suggesting that sorrow, like joy, leaves its trace.

Pierrot envelops the viewer in a gentle, aching melancholy. It is a work steeped in tenderness and presence with absence, a portrait not of a person but of an emotional state—fragile, luminous, and held in place by the insistence of memory.