PIER WRIGHT
These paintings celebrate color, form, spontaneity & imperfection. Finished paintings are meant to look “easy” but they are nearly always the result of a great struggle. Influences include Tantric painting, the poetry of Con Hilberry & Diane Seuss, Prayer Wheels, Chris Martin, leaping poetry, Mary Heilmann, early Roman glass, Terry Winters, body surfing, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Fairfield Porter, Michael Delp, John Cage (“start anywhere”!), standing before Monet’s Water Lilies at Musée de l'Orangerie, Ornette Coleman, every road trip taken with Nancy, Philip Guston’s late paintings, Giotto, Joni Mitchell, Brice Marden’s “Etchings to Rexroth”, solo piano (Keith Jarrett, Myra Melford, Brian Fielding’s late night recordings, Chick Corea’s Piano Improvisations 1 & 2, “Blue” Jean Tyranny, etc..), Phyllida Barlow, Shun Kumagai glass, the first poetry reading I ever attended & have never forgotten; Robert Bly reading Silence In The Snowy Fields, Isamu Noguchi, the ceramic works of Toshiko Takaezu, C.D. Wright, Ron Gorchov, Stephen Dunn… along with every single artist I follow on Instagram. Poetry & painting have always been and continue to be an investigation into my own ignorance, a process of self-discovery in which not knowing results in its own unique kind of knowledge
photo by Francois Robert summer 2021
