• Courtesy
• "Space Oddity"

An image of Vermont artist Andrea Pearlman's colorful abstract paintings might not call to mind the Rolling Stones. Yet the now-wizened rockers inspired the title of her current exhibit at Vermont Studio Center's Red Mill Gallery: "Two Thousand Light Years From Home." A song on the band's 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, on which the Stones briefly flirted with psychedelia, is titled "2000 Light Years From Home."

Pearlman said by phone that inspiration struck when Leila Bandar, VSC's visual arts program manager, asked for the title of her exhibit. "In the paintings I have lots of circles that look like planets," Pearlman observed. "In the '60s the Rolling Stones had that song, and I thought, Perfect."

She carried the concept further. "I label the paintings after they're painted, and I got this idea of labeling them with names from the universe or cosmos," Pearlman said. "One where stairs go off the canvas [is called] 'Stairway to Heaven.' There's a bunch of David Bowie titles. 'Blue Moon' from the '50s. Anything that had planet, universe or heaven — I looked them over and matched them to the paintings. It was fun." The exercise also informed her reception playlist.

Pearlman is showing drawings and hooked rugs, as well — the latter she frequently swaps out with other examples from her collection at home. "I'm more protective of the rugs because they take so long to make," she explained.

Pearlman lives with her husband and fellow artist George on Johnson's Pearl Street. ("I can always find my way home," she joked.) The couple met while studying at Pratt Institute in New York City and moved to Vermont in the mid-'70s. When George took an administrative job at the Vermont Studio Center a decade later, Andrea opened an art supply store in the back of their house. "I could paint, but when someone came over, I could help them," she said of the arrangement.

Later they moved the store moved across the street, and the Pearlmans sold it in 2014. Through the years, Andrea has made abstract paintings. She has endlessly been absorbed, she said, by the same "problem" to solve in her art. "I'm trying to move things in space, in rhythm, without using perspective," she said. "I'm trying to keep the painting flat and have the experience be three-dimensional. I'm trying to do two things at once."

With vivid colors and interesting shapes, Pearlman infuses her work with a sense of movement as well as dimension. "I see it in nature: push/pull, cause and effect. It makes sense to me," she said. "It's my explanation of the world, it's a great problem to work on, and it's fun."

Pearlman credits the influence of abstract expressionist painter James Gahagan — himself a student of Hans Hofmann — and Gahagan's artist wife, Pat deGogorza. "When you paint abstractly, you need some kind of philosophy, an aesthetic," she said.

"James Gahagan said 50 years ago, let the color determine the shape," Pearlman continued. "It's kind of random in the beginning: You put down the color; you react; you move it around. Nothing is really preconceived. So it's always an adventure."

"Two Thousand Light Years From Home" is on view through January 26.