Michael Pearce probes our deepest emotional connections with one another through his magnificent figural paintings.
 
Renowned painter and chair of The Representational Art Conference Michael Pearce has put together an outstanding solo exhibition at Blackboard Gallery in Camarillo, California. Titled “Love,” the show will feature a number of Pearce’s paintings that give a visual language to “the feeling you get when you love,” as he writes. “They [the paintings] emphasize the fragile unity of mind meeting mind.”
 


Michael Pearce, “Half a Kiss,” oil on canvas, (c) Blackboard Gallery 2015

 
“Cloud Nine” is a beautifully entrancing image of a female subject engulfed in a patterned arrangement of white lines and shades that recall fabric. With only her head in view, the sitter’s gaze — which meets ours — and subtle expression seem pregnant with a compelling, yet unknown, narrative. Pearce has also created a fascinating dichotomy between the naturalistic and masterfully colored figure and the unfurnished, abstracted space she inhabits.
 
“Half a Kiss” displays similar characteristics. Imaged in three-quarter view is a female subject in profile, wrapped tightly in a luminous white-and-gray fabric. Her mouth slightly ajar, she appears to call out and long for someone or something outside of the frame. Blackboard Gallery reports that, “Much of Pearce’s art is figurative and allegorical. He uses oil paint to transform canvases into stories that embrace the magic and romance of an earlier era. He uses conceptual themes that capture his audience by encouraging their individual imaginative interpretation of the events he has painted. There’s meaning here — a reconstruction of ideas bigger than self — that makes these paintings feel greater than their already large size.”
 
“Love” opens on September 3 and will be on view through September 25. An opening reception will take place on September 5 at 4 p.m. Pacific.
 
To learn more, visit Blackboard Gallery.
 
This article was featured in Fine Art Today, a weekly e-newsletter from Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. To start receiving Fine Art Today for free, click here.
 


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Andrew Webster is the former Editor of Fine Art Today and worked as an editorial and creative marketing assistant for Streamline Publishing. Andrew graduated from The University of North Carolina at Asheville with a B.A. in Art History and Ceramics. He then moved on to the University of Oregon, where he completed an M.A. in Art History. Studying under scholar Kathleen Nicholson, he completed a thesis project that investigated the peculiar practice of embedded self-portraiture within Christian imagery during the 15th and early 16th centuries in Italy.

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