"Our Common Hand" Margarita Peraza-Rugeley

Margarita Peraza-Rugeley, Arkadelphia, AR
Our Common Hand, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 24”

This painting draws on the visual vocabulary created 600 years ago in Milan, Italy by Filippo Maria Visconti and his son-in-law Francesco Sforza. Their deck of cards was used for art and entertainment, not as prophetic tools like modern-day descendants, the Tarot.

The Visconti-Sforza cards blended late international Gothic styles with early Renaissance realism. That synthesis emerges all too clearly in the flowing lines, the delicate facial expressions, and the way space is organized within each card's frame.

The Visconti-Sforza deck's beauty, craftsmanship and enduring visual power continue to build connections across time, geography, and culture. They speak to something timeless in human nature that invites us to reflect on our bond with art, history, and the symbolic nature of language.

In this painting I create a table of green brocade fabric and five cards that harken back to the Visconti-Sforza style. The imagery and the use of primary colors (plus white and black) underscore the basic factors that still form humanity's common ground. Finally, the hand symbolizes humans attempting to understand the role of those factors in their lives.