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Artist Statement:
ABOUT MY WORK
(mixed mediums on cotton,
linen & papers)
The works shown stretch
across 30+ years of my
professional career. Some of
the paintings date from the
early 1980 up until the most
recent in 2006
(Paintings,drawings, screens,
window treatments). Where
indicated, by price, the works
are available for purchase.
Several of the works in public
collections are shown to give
an idea of the breadth and
range of my creative output.
I am open to commissions for
specific sites and enjoy
working collaboratively with
architectural, interior and
private designers.
Educated in Europe, the Far
East and the United States,
with degrees in philosophy,
language and music, I am
inclined in my paintings and
surface designs to work in a
serial manner, exploring a
single subject's broad color
and structural potential.
Firmly rooted in the material
world of wave and particle
physics and spiritually
inclined towards mysticism,
Eastern and Western
philosophies are merged into a
personal visual language. I
am currently drawn to
landscapes, however, "the
tenor of my painting is as
much a landscape of the soul
as that of place. Scenes
remembered and scenes invented
commingle like the smells, the
tastes and the textures of
memorable ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Ray Pierotti began
professionally exhibiting his
paintings and surface
treatment designs in 1963.
Since then he has had numerous
solo exhibitions. The
following is only a partial
listing of the more important
locations. For a full
accounting of his exhibitions
since 1963 please call: 404
874-6672 or e-mail ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
GALLERYS and ARTIST
REPRESENTATIVES WHERE
PAINTINGS AND DESIGNS BY Ray
Pierotti
can be seen at the following
locations and
commissions can be arranged
through the
the contacts listed at each
gallery.
HANOVER FINE ARTS
Contact: Richard Ireland,
Owner
22 Dundas Street
Edinburgh EH3 6JN Scotland
0131 556-2181
PATRICIA PAIER, ...
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Collections:
Ray Pierotti's paintings, wall
treatments, Minature
Meditation Screens, free
standing divider screens and
window treatments (over 600)
are included in 256 private,
corporate and public
collections. For a full
listing please contact the
artist at 404 874-6672 or
e-mail at
rpryb@mindspring.com. The
works can be ...
Further Information
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Reviews for Ray Pierotti:
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ARTS FESTIVAL GUEST LAYERED WITH TALENTS by Amanda Bohman, Newsminer, Fairbanks, Alaska, 07/03/06
Ray Pierotti's paintings, viewed on a computer screen, seem like communications from another world. Consider the work "Separate Reality <25" (7.5'H x 15'L). The painting features 21 mostly circular shapes, varying in their size and complexity of design, and organized in three rows. Two circles in the middle stand out with bright centers, as if to say, "Look at me, I'm alive!"
Pierotti is know for multi-layering on canvas using acrylic paint, colored pencil and Inkiodye, a process he devised and has been honing since the 1970's. He has more than 600 works in private, public and corporate collections- paintings,wall treatments, free-standing divider screens and window treatments. The New York Public Library, Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and the University of Utah own his work which sells for up to $20,000.00.
Pierotti, when he teaches a workshop, doesn't just teach technique. He teaches attitude. Artists should look within themselves for their center of creativity. "You don't need to be dictated by outside sources" Pierotti said. His lectures focus on using mathematics, music and meditation to focus within. "I put out the ideas and I put out concepts and I try to help each individual integrate it into their own working sytle or into their own approach to painting."
Pierotti was born in Bountiful, Utah, the middle of five children. His father was a farmer and amateur musician, while his mother was a housewife who, in addition to managing
the daily farm rituals, later managed school lunch programs. The young Pierotti was surrounded by art and music every day,
He left Utah after turning 19 to fight in the Korean War as a "foot soldier" in the US Army. After returning home, he traveled to France to serve on a "Mormon" mission. Following the mission he attended La Sorbonne where he studied languages and philosophy. He later earned graduate degress in musicology and composition from the University of Utah.
He then moved to New York City where he worked for the Museum of American Crafts. He was curator and exhibitions coordinator and later directed the regional programs for the American Craft Council. During that time he started to paint seriously. "I realized that it was my calling," he said. "It's the most effective way for me to communicate with my deeper self, with my higher self, and to express my perceptions of my own reality."
Pierotti eventually left New York to become director of the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. He later moved to Winston-Salem, NC to open The Sawtooth School for Visual Arts and ended his administrative career by re-opening the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Rabun Gap, GA.
Pierotti works four to eight hours a day, creating several works at once, mainly because of the time consumed by the multi-layering process. Some of his paintings have upward of 60 layers. And yet, Pierotti never formally studied painting. He considers looking at thousands of works of art, attending concerts, the theatre and traveling his formal art education.
"many people who come out of art schools are stilted or limited in their ability to move beyond what was drilled into them," he said. "I've always pushed the edge, to look beyond and experiment."
ATLANTA ARTIST'S WORKS ARE SOOTHING AND COMPLEX
by Diane Heilenman, Louisville Courier-Journal Art Critic
The imagery of Atlanta artist Ray Pierotti on view at the Patio Gallery is remarkably soothing. . .However, his drawings have an absorbing complexity, and Pierotti more than meets his stated intention to engage and awaken the viewer's awarness of the many layers of seeing and being.
Three drawings of interiors done in a calming square format gently present the puzzle of perception, exploring light and its reflections. "Dawn in Room Four" presents us with the dilemma of shifting boundaries between what we "see" as being inside or outside the room and its windows. "South Morning" deals with the same issue in a different locale. It becomes an even more powerful device to suggest meditation on the unseen.
A similar energy and impact ocurs in Pierotti's large painting "Jacob's Ladder," where a line of ever smaller red squares march into an abstract landscape.
Pierotti's art is part of the increasingly spiritual - or perhaps it could just as well be called holistic - content of contemporary abstraction...Other influences on his work include a background in music and philosophy. Pierotti, a native of Utah is self-taught in art but considers himself "tutored" by visits to museums, cathedrals, libraries and musical and theatrical performances.
One constant element in his work that relates to the influence of performance art is the sense of time elapsed. The fluidity of seasons, the flow of music, the tides of thoughts and emotions are all conveyed in works from small paintings, such as "Mahler's Variation V," to ambitious paintings such as "Spring Equinox," which carries a design of a stylized tree opening in leaf.
Making life memorable is part of the Pierotti plan. His Louisville exhibition includes many works with a compelling intimacy, from miniature meditation screens to a wonderful fold-out alphabet book and other boxed book-like works with a hand-held scale.
The smaller works are the most exciting. . .In this selection, particularly in the drawing "Midnight "Pass," Pierotti crisply conveys the notion of the examined world, the examined life, through the device of a gridded screen spray-painted like a veil over the pencil landscape. The screen becomes a series of symbolic windows onto the objective world and is quickly understood as a metaphor for the artist's presence, itself a symbol for the "eye of the mind and soul. " 05/26/02
PIEROTTI OPENS EYES, EARS TO BEAUTY OF "SOULSCAPES"
Helen Forsberg, The Salt Lake Tribune
Ray Pierotti long has been exploring the colors of sound and the sounds of colors.
Pierotti, a native of Bountiful and a University of Utah alumna, began his studies as a music major, continuing his education as a doctoral condidate in musicology and composition at the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
Somewhere along the way, his focus changed. "I realized I was more visual than oral in my creative abilities," said Pierotti from his home in Atlanta. As a graduate student at the U., he started to develop a musical notation system that reflected color and shape as well as sound. He remembers a professor telling him, "This is not music, this is painting."
"That should have been a clue to me, but it wasn't at the time," said Pierotti. the notion came to him when he moved to New York in the early '60s. There he became involved with a publication revolving around new musical notations systems. "It was a visual approach to music making," said Pierotti.
A prolific painter, Pierotti has more than 500 paintings and designs in more than 200 corporate, public and private colections. One, "Emergent Black Hole," is in the permanent collection at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum in Logan, Utah. This week a series of seven paintings, "Pastoral Etudes," will be installed in the newly renovated Gardner Music Building's Recital Hall along with one of his "Separate Reality" paintings on linen.
Pierotti describes the works as a series of seven musical scores, each one a key of the well-tempered scale. The different colors are associated with a particular key. For example, B Major is violet, D-Sharp Major is blue and C Minor is red.
Pierotti's landscapes, which he calls "soulscapes," are the result of a layering process of indelible dye, acrylic paint and color pencil on raw cotton or linen or a similar process on paper. There may be as many as 80 layers in the cotton or linen works.
"You see a lot of images below the surface," said Pierotti. "It is my way of giving a sense of space that I see and hear when I hear music. My paintings reflect the nuances you can hear between two musical instruments. This happens too between two shapes, two sounds."
Constance Rodman Theodore, who represents Pierotti at her C Gallery, is drawn to the "astringent elegance" of the artist's work. . ."The restrained richness of texture of the land that emanates from his work is an example of the shibui manifesto." 1999
COMMUNITY COLLABORATION - H.J.C. Bowden Senior Multipurpose Facility Public Art Project. Staff; FAC "Art-Word" Atlanta, GA
The mural created by Ray Pierotti for the Bowden Facility was commissioned through Fulton County Arts Council's Public Art. Pierotti's proposal to create a large-scale mural (8 feet by 40 feet) in collaboration with seniors from the Center was selected by a community panel in the summer of 2000. The artist conducted a series of lectures and workshops (between February - April of 2001) where the participants learned about a mixed media layering technique (of the artists' invention) using inkodye, acrylic paints and colored pencils. The artist incorporated the work created by the senior participants into the final mural. The seniors painted 16 of the 48 panels.
Pierotti's concept is like that of a quilt where the overall pattern is abstract, but individual elements and patterns tell a story. Details, colors and shapes in each individual panel suggest historical references and symbols that relate to a sense of place and community. Like a traditional fabric quilt, the making of this "quilt" came about with the community of neighbors and friends from the Bowden Facility coming together to create and express themselves.
"The pattern of colors and primary shapes floats over the scenes which are suggestive of steeples, buildings and elements of the natural landscape that is unique to East Point" explains Pierotti. The painting involves layers of symbolic and metaphorical language of color and shapes that enhance the composition. "Like the diversity of people who come to the Center, the painting cannot be understood in one superficial encounter. Understanding comes with time, frequency and observation."
2001.
THE ARTIST TALKS ABOUT HIS STUDIOS
Staff, Fiber Arts Magazine
"The studio is a sacred and safe place for me" writes Ray Pierotti. "A place where I can expose my soul without fear of judgement. A place where I can take risks, knowing that I am responsible for the outcome and can take ownership of the successes and acknowledge the failures. I invite others into the studio only when I sense that they are sincere and sympathetic and can be trusted."
In his two studio spaces, Pierotti creates window and wall coverings, free standing screens and paintings using a method that involves 60 or more layers of Inkodye (a transparent dye that develops in sunlight), acrylic paint, and colored pencil on a base of cotton or linen. He notes: "From the beginning of my professional career, I have always worked, lived and entertained in my studios. This comes from having been raised on a farm, where the land is your home, and from my long experience of working in Europe, where the shopkeepers live above their stores."
The large barn studio in Shellman, Georgia, a small rural town in South Georgia is where he creates his larger works. His second studio is in his home in Atlanta where he meets clients, discusses design proposals and creates smaller works, often on paper. 2002.
For a full listing of articles about Pierotti's work that have appeared in numerous publications please telephone 404 874-6672 or e-mail rpryb@mindspring.com and request a full listing.
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