Carole Pierce: Sky, Land & Water, Seager Gray Gallery

CAROLE PIERCE

Sky, Land & Water

CAROLE PIERCE: Sky, Land & Water Exhibition Dates: April 1 - May 3, 2015 Reception for the artist: Saturday, April 4, 5:30 to 7:30 pm Front Cover: Ocean Sky 1, 2014 - 2015, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in Back Cover: detail: Golden Sky, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 54 in Essay by Barbara Morris Photo Credit: Jay Daniel Direct Inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415-384-8288 art@seagergray.com all rights reserved

CAROLE PIERCE: Sky, Land & Water

essay by Barbara Morris

“There’s something about the sky,” says Carole Pierce, “that really defines the environment.” Pierce’s fascination dates to her childhood in Texas, where the sky loomed large and she became mesmerized with its ever-changing spectacle of moods and color.

“The unpredictable magnificence of that light and change that exists around us constantly…I never tire of it.” Her father, a pilot, was always obsessive about the weather—when it was good, he would often invite her up flying with him, providing her with a bird’s-eye view of Dallas.

While earlier works depicted a bucolic, invented landscape featuring trees, or mountains, in Pierce’s latest exhibition “Sky, Land & Water” at Seager Gray Gallery these referents are notably absent, the viewer instead immersed in a realm of pure atmosphere. From a blazing yellow canvas, Twilight Arch, Saffron Sky (2014), with cadmium and lemon yellows taken “from that one tiny blinding point of light behind the horizon” forming subtle shapes like stratus clouds, to the cool and muted grays—grays with flickers of blue, or pink—of Silver Cloud (2014), Pierce offers much to engage us in her atmospheric vistas.

Twilight Arch, Saffron Sky oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 60 x 60 in

Pierce, who attended graduate school at California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) in Oakland, where she focused on printmaking, received an MFA with Highest Distinction. Charles Gill, then chair of printmaking, was a big influence, and Pierce also did an independent study with Cal professor Minimalist painter David Simpson, who also helped form her aesthetic. She also feels a strong kinship with the Hudson River School, painters such as Thomas Cole, who celebrated the majesty of the natural world surrounding them, with its echoes of the sublime, and also particularly with the work of Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose breathtaking landscapes also, as Pierce puts it, “have a quality of something that’s not quite right, that’s just a little bit off...”

While grounded in art history, Pierce’s work displays as well a contemporary edge—with its impulse to Minimalism and a seriality that relates to modernism and post-modernism. Many of the works on view in fact form diptychs, or triptychs. Ocean Sky 1 (2015) offers a stirring vision of cumulus clouds in misty veils of off-white, blue, and gray, hovering above a rippling turquoise sea, while Ocean Sky 2 (2015) revisits the theme in warm hues, peach, mustard yellow, or ocher, glowing as if lit at dusk.

Dark Beauty

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 60 x 60 in

Dark Beauty (2014) portrays a sunset dividing the canvas in horizontal bands of color, dusky warm cloud layers separating a sky in modulated hues of blue. One may wonder about the intense dark area banding the bottom of the canvas, beneath a bright stripe an unexpected shade of coral: a demarcation of horizon, is this where sky meets land, or is it sea? This ambiguity of identity, the indeterminate density, fascinates the artist, returning to the theme time and again. Paring down landscape to its bare essentials, many works even relinquishing the grounding device of a horizon line, allows the viewer to float free in an atmospheric space. Some, such as Mist (2015), become in effect color field paintings, recalling the work of Mark Rothko, or David Simpson, with, as Pierce reveals “eight or nine layers of colors…blues, yellows, several pinks…a metallic gold” merging optically to create its shimmering gray surface. She explains this new direction happened quite unexpectedly, that “it just appeared.”

Elements: Deep Water oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 diptych, 10 x 10 in each

In addition to the larger works, Pierce presents a number of smaller studies. These gestural sketches employ thicker, more vigorous brushwork, and bold, vibrant colors contrasting with the modulated tones of the more generously scaled works. These vivid pieces again take their hues from nature, Elements Deep Water (2014) a pair in sapphire-like hues of ultramarine blue, while Elements: Sky Earth (2014) plays two blue-violet works against a third ranging from lime green to a viridian, scraped across a sky blue.

Elements: Sky, Earth

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 triptych, 10 x 8 in each

Landscape painting, as a genre, may be viewed as adhering to an aesthetic that evokes an earlier era, yet for those with the ability to approach the subject from unexpected angles, with fresh eyes, it remains current. With its meditative aspect, “Sky, Land & Water� takes Pierce’s work in a more reductive direction, continuing to present distillations of the landscape, with their a dramatic range of moods and temperatures, a rich variety of emotionally and visually evocative images offering a window on her carefully observed world.

Barbara Morris February, 2015

Golden Sky

oil on canvas, 2014 60 x 54 in

Clouds after the Rain at Dusk oil on canvas, 2014 60 x 60 in

Evening Sky Over the Sea oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 60 x 60 in

Mist

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 60 x 60 in

Ocean Sky I

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 24 x 24 in

Ocean Sky II

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 24 x 24 in

Silver Cloud I

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 24 x 24 in

Silver Cloud II

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 24 x 24 in

High Desert Fire I & II

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 22 x 22 in

High Desert Fire III

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 36 x 36 in

Daybreak

oil on canvas, 2013 - 2014 36 x 36 in

Night Sky, I, II & III

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 triptych, 12 x 12 in each

Water, Land & Fire

oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 triptych, 14 x 14 in each

Spring Clouds I, II & III oil on canvas, 2014 triptych, 7 x 7 in each

Summer Clouds I, II & III oil on canvas, 2014 triptych, 7 x 7 in each

Luminous Tree

oil on canvas and gold leaf, 2014 60 x 60 in

Light Field, I, II & III

oil on canvas, 2013 - 2014 triptych, 48 x 48 in each

Light Field, I

oil on canvas, 2013 - 2014 48 x 48 in

Light Field, II

oil on canvas, 2013 - 2014 48 x 48 in

Light Field, III

oil on canvas, 2013 - 2014 48 x 48 in

Elements: Air, Fire, Earth oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 quadriptych, 10 x 8 in each

Elements: Air, Water, Earth oil on canvas, 2014 - 2015 quadriptych, 10 x 8 in each

CAROLE PIERCE 2003

2001

2000 1999

1998 1997

EDUCATION BFA in Painting, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX MFA in Printmaking, High Distinction, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA Also studied with Mel Bochner, Charles Gill, and George Nama SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2015 2013 2012 2011 2010 2008 2007 2005 2002 2001 2000

1997

Sky, Land & Water, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA Intangible, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY New Work, November 2012, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Atmospheric, Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, MT New Work, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Heat and Light, Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, MT Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Climate (Recent Paintings), Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, MT Recent Paintings, Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Recent Paintings, Bradford-Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA Recent Paintings and Works on Paper, Bradford-Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA Recent Paintings and Works on Paper, Emmie Smock Gallery, San Francisco, CA Installation of Paintings on Copper, Art Source, San Francisco, CA

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED TWO-PERSON AND THREE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2013 2010

2009 2008 2006 2005

2002 2000 1999 1998

Marcus, Carole Pierce, Shawn Smith, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX David Crismon, Jeri Ledbetter, Carole Pierce, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX John Brosio, Carole Pierce, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Carole Pierce & Bill Weaver, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Carole Pierce & Carl Dern, Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael, CA Linda Christensen and Carole Pierce, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Carole Pierce and Edward Nuns, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Carole Pierce and Jeff Wilson, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX John McCormick and Carole Pierce, Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, Carole Pierce and Marci Hardin, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, Tx Wolf Kahn and Carole Pierce, Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach,

Five Contemporary Artists Take Stock of the Land, Artsy, Summer 2014 Memories Etched in Flame, Big Sky Magazine, Summer 2011 Collecting Fine Art, D-Home Magazine, January, 2004 Paint Junkies at Michael Martin Galleries by Christine Brenneman, Art Week, June

2003, Volume 34.

Transcendent Landscapes are on the Horizon, by Lydia Ringwald, Laguna News-Post,

November 2002 Vanilla Sky, produced by Tom Cruise, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, paintings used for set decoration, December 2001 Landscape Mystique at Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna News-Post, November 2000 The Lorax’s Trees, by Christina Rees, The Dallas Observer, November 1999 The Best of Printmaking, An International Collection, by Lynne Allen and Phyllis

McGibbon, 1997 Landscapes Reflecting Inner Worlds, Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican, October, 1993 Architectural Digest, July 1993 SELECTED AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS 1995 1994

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2014 2012 2011 2010 2008

2007 2006 2004

A Sense of Place, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA The Earth and Sky XIV, Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, MT Spring Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Spring Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Group Show, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Summer Group Show, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY Gallery Artist Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Gallery Artist Group Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Landscape Show, Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Spring Show, Group of Five, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, New York Group Show, C.F.A. Gallery, San Anselmo, California

Winter Exhibition, J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, New York Paint Junkies, Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco, London, England December Gallery Artists Show, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists, The Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Earth & Sky, Bradford Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA Landscape & Memory, Diane Nelson Fine Art, Pasadena, CA Land & Sky, Gallatin River Gallery, Big Sky, MT Elements of Landscape, Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Bradford Gallery, San Francisco, CA Regional Canvas 1999, Pro Arts, Oakland, CA

By Invitation, The Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

By Invitation, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA The Color Red, Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX

1993 1992 1991 1990

1989

Printmaking Fellowship, KALA Institute, Berkeley, CA Monotype Award, 10th Annual Juried National Exhibition Part II: Works on Paper, Berkeley Art Center Association, Berkeley, CA Arts in Embassies Program, U.S. Department of State. Two paintings placed in U.S. Embassy Residence in Nairobi, Kenya First Place Honors, Annual Print Exhibition, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA Third Award, The Prints and the Paper, Annual Juried Print Exhibition, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA Third Award, Counterpoint: 23rd Annual National Juried Exhibition, Hill Country Arts Foundation, Ingram TX Art in Embassies Program, U. S. Department of State. Havana, Cuba Cash Award, Pacific Prints 1990/5th Biennial Print Competition and Exhibition, Pacific Art League, Palo Alto, CA Monotype Award, Los Angeles Printmaking Society’s 11th National Juried Exhibition, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA Monotype Award, National Academy of Design, New York, NY