Ann T. Pierce Interview | Bobbi J. Quercia Introduction

Ann T. Pierce Introduction
Northern California Women Artists

© 2002 Interviewed by Susan Canavarro

Ann Pierce earned her BFA in 1953 and her MFA in 1955 from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and from 1964 to 1995, taught at Chico State. In addition to teaching, Ann served as Chair of the Art Department from 1980 to 1983. Before retiring in 1995, and since, she has taught many private watercolor workshops in California and Nevada; has juried competitions; and has herself won many awards over her long and prolific career. Her work has also been published in nine professional books and magazines including Watercolor '89 and Splash: America's Best contemporary Watercolors, 1991, and can be found in numerous private collections.

Ann began teaching oil painting, color, design, and drawing at Chico, but after a year, was asked to include watercolor in her painting class. In a very short time she was on her way to developing the watercolor program for the art department. At the time, having a focus on watercolor separate from oil was unusual because for years it's not been considered a viable medium in the "fine" art world, particularly within the academic arts. It has been, and still is, considered by some to be less prestigious than oil painting, merely a tool for preliminary sketches, and/or a weekend hobby. But through Ann's unique and gifted teaching skills, I learned that watercolor can be much more than just a tool or stepping stone, it is a complex and "versatile" medium in its own right. Ann's most recent works are full sheet, bold expressions inspired by the canyons in northern Arizona and Upper Bidwell Park, just outside of Chico. The different landscapes of the rock canyons and Chico's Upper Bidwell park hold an overwhelming feeling of power she says. To express that personal, powerful emotional response, she is not creating an illusion of real space by using ordinary tools of linear and aerial perspective or local color dictated by her subject, but instead, she is responding to magnificent scenery with her skillful use of simple, big, bold shapes dictated by the masculinity of the subject, with totally subjective color, and with abstraction. Her vibrant, intense paintings are not large, but they feel monumental and powerful, like the canyons, and yet they are free-spirited with unbound emotion. Their excitement lies, not only in their intensity of color and feeling, but also in the dichotomy of representing both male and female sensitivities, in being strong, yet fluid and responsive.

In her artist statement Ann says:

Landscape is generally my inspiration, but the process ventures forth unbound by the restrictions imposed by nature, conveying perhaps a sense of natural, ever changing reality, even more, the realness of color relationships and intensities, shapes that change and merge, resulting in abstractions of the environment: the way I perceive the day, the heat, the sunshine, the shadow, the redness, the coolness, the excitement of the seasons.

LINKS

Ann's paintings can also be seen at the DOVETAIL DESIGN GALLERY in Chico, CA.
Read article Chico News & Review - about the inception of the Dovetail Design Gallery, Chico, CA, by Scott Brennan-Smith
Read News & Review Article - recent article about The Bag Ladies show at the Chico Art Center, by John O"Brien.

Ann T. Pierce Interview | Bobbi J. Quercia Introduction