"Floating in Place" | Marjorie Pierson

Marjorie Pierson- FLOATING IN PLACE

November 16th – January 27th

Opening Reception-December 2nd

Artist Statement- “With so much change taking place in our world right now, I often want to take refuge. 

I go to nature, and the water. Any ocean, lake, river or marsh can often bring instant tranquility, and floating in open water is dream-like to me. Once I’m in the water, though, I can’t seem to forget how quickly nature itself is changing. Rainer Maria Rilke explained this feeling to his friend Sigmund Freud: those of us most in thrall with the beauty of nature are often especially aware of its ephemeral nature.

My work explores rapidly evolving landscapes and our complex relationships with them. Inspired by photographer Richard Misrach and painter Gerhard Richter, I use color photography, digital collage and mixed media to explore how we experience and explain environmental transformation. The visual narrative in this show weaves landscapes from my native south Louisiana with melting glacial fields in Alaska, the  increasingly warm Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and evolving seascapes around the world. 

Photographs of evolving bodies of water -- various oceans, seas, freshwater lakes and salt water marshes -- float on sugar cane, bamboo and watercolor papers. Landscapes are blurred in long, moving exposures, and blended in digital collages. Mixed media pieces begin with pigment prints on Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper, layered onto birch panels with oils, encaustic medium (beeswax with resin) and sometimes gold leaf.

I’m hoping that the changing world will slow down a bit, one day, so we can simply float in place for a while. I’m still hopeful.”