In December 2025, the old floor-to-ceiling mural by Nina Chanel Abney that graced the Plevins Lobby of the Art Museum of WVU came down, and in January 2026, a new mural went up. Emilio Perez’s “Through the Valley” covers the enormous wall with graphic, colorful mountains and soft, swirling clouds.
“Through the Valley” bridges Perez’s artistic styles, encompassing the abstract designs he was once known for and the softer, semi-realistic landscapes that are his new signature style.
Art Museum Curator Robert Bridges was first introduced to Perez in 2017 by WVU alumnus Jacob Lewis, now the CEO and President of Pace Prints. Roughly five years before, Perez had done a set of prints with Pace, and he and Lewis became friends. At the time, the artist was still in his abstraction phase: hard graphic lines and clear-cut swirls carved out of broad latex and acrylic paint strokes, revealing layers of color on the enameled wood canvas.
That was the artwork Bridges saw when he toured Perez’s New York studio in 2017, and he left contemplating how he could fit the artist’s work into the museum’s programming.
In late 2024, an early Perez painting was donated to the Art Museum of WVU. The timing was fortuitous—the mural on display at the time was due to come down at the end of 2025, since they change every two years, and the museum would need a replacement. Having one of Perez’s abstract paintings in the collection motivated Bridges to look up the artist he’d met years prior.
In the intervening years, Perez’s style had shifted from bold abstractions to more recognizable, though not realistic, landscapes. During the pandemic, Perez had reevaluated his relationship with his abstract art and found it no longer challenged him the way he wanted. During those quiet years, he explored a new style, going back to the landscapes that had first inspired him and the classic oil-on-linen that hadn’t appealed to him when he was younger.
Even as Perez was using a more traditional medium to capture a more traditional subject, he was still playing with shapes, forms, negative spaces and the reductive process that had defined his abstract paintings.
“I thought that was really interesting,” said Bridges, “so I reached out and talked to him.”
"I would rather be a participant in this conversation of painting, cutting and taking away, and be surprised as I go, letting the process of making the piece inform whatever the next step is going to be." Emilio Perez
After their conversation, Bridges was certain Perez was the right person to do the new mural, and Perez was confident he could deliver. However, Perez recommended creating the enormous piece in a series of panels rather than applying it directly to the museum’s wall.
Perez said he’s never been a fan of representational work, preferring to be guided by instinct and emotion. That’s what informed his abstract work, and even as he moved into the realm of landscapes, Perez still rarely started with an image in mind.
“I find that anytime I try to work towards an idealized image in my head, I'm always disappointed. I would rather be a participant in this conversation of painting, cutting and taking away, and be surprised as I go, letting the process of making the piece inform whatever the next step is going to be,” Perez said.
“Through the Valley” was loosely inspired by a painting Perez had previously done that put him in mind of the hills and valleys of Appalachia. He took a picture of that painting and put it in Photoshop, playing with the proportions and gridding out a basic composition to fit a much larger space.
“I knew how tall the finished mural would be, but I couldn’t visualize it very well,” said Perez. “That idea of not seeing the final piece until it was installed made the process that much more exciting.”
Perez approached painting the mural much the same way he had his abstract paintings, starting with loose “gestures” of brushstrokes and colors.
“I’m going in and using the brushstrokes almost like a roadmap, reacting intuitively to the gestures, the strokes, the mistakes, to create the actual painting,” Perez said.
To create the 24-foot-by-28-foot mural, Perez chalked out a basic design on 4-by-4
panels of masonite, a kind of smooth particle board. When it came time to paint,
he tacked two rows of these panels across his studio wall. He’d start painting
on the top row and work his way down. Once he reached the bottoms of the lower
panels, he removed the top row, moved the lower panels up and added a new set
of panels to the bottom row.
“The mural was so big that I did start with an initial composition and image of what the shapes were going to be, but in terms of the color, the detail, all of that stuff really happens in the moment. And that's the way I like to work,” he continued. “Even with this mural, I started just painting at the top, and once I got to the bottom of the mural, that's when I started the stenciling.”
In his abstract paintings, Perez would carve away layers of paint to reveal the colors underneath. For the mural, however, because of its medium and size, he used a stencil to add the colorful graphic lines.
“With the stencil, I was trying to bring in both aspects of my work. I was basically roughing things in, and the looser and more expressive I was with the initial application of paint, the more lines and gestures I gave myself to follow with the stencil. I knew I didn’t have to be super careful when I was first applying the paint because the stencil would make it all snap together,” he said.
Perez started painting with a few different colors, loosely blocking out what could be the side of a mountain, then placed a clear blue material over it that still allowed him to see the paint beneath. Like in his abstract art, he cut out the contours to create the graphic representation of the mountain. Once that was done, he went over the stencil with a roller, adding colors that contrast and pop.
To Perez, this intuitive approach makes the work more personal.
“I think about the artistic process and the creation of the piece itself, and how that reflects on me. I spend most of my time in this studio alone. It's myself and the paintings, and so they're very introspective in a way,” he said.
Perez started crafting “Through the Valley” just before Thanksgiving 2025, and he was onsite at the Art Museum of WVU in January 2026 to install the painted panels himself, with help from the Art Museum staff.
“I personally wanted to do it, because I wanted to see it happening in real time.
I'd put so much effort into making the piece that it was important for me to
physically put it up. The excitement of seeing every row as it went up, getting
taller and taller and taller, was really cool,” he said.
Installation went smoothly and now “Through the Valley” is settled into its home in the Plevins Lobby, just outside the McGee Gallery.
The mural can be viewed at the Art Museum of WVU, Thursday through Sunday from 12:30 p.m to 6 p.m. The museum is temporarily closed for spring break but will reopen to visitors on Thursday, March 26.