Diane Pieri: Sunday in Varanasi, 2015, painting, 23" x 33" x 2"

Courtesy of Cerulean Arts

About:

I consider myself a Symbolic Abstractionist, incorporating meaningful symbols into fields of abstraction. For over 25 years, I have been deeply immersed in the almost unearthly beauty of Indian miniatures. I was solely inspired through books until I was awarded a 2012 Independence Foundation Grant to travel to Northern India, the wellspring of my desire to create beauty in the everyday world.
My paintings are translations of and reactions to gorgeous marble inlays, breathtaking landmarks, delightful Indian folk images and intensely colorful experiences from this pivotal trip. Being in India took me way beyond printed images. Intimacies of India, Phases of the Sun, Still Life Gardens and Intimate Whispers weave meaning, symbol, color and purposeful design into my need to offer beauty in the everyday.

Bio:

Diane Pieri is a Visual Artist who received a BFA from Temple University's Tyler School of Art in 1969. She has had 31 solo exhibitions and been included in 210 national and international group exhibitions since 1969. She has been the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Grants (1999/1992), two Independence Foundation Fellowships in the Arts (2001/2011), a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant (1992). She was included in the 2005 Philadelphia Invitational Portfolio, Philagrafika. She has been a fellow at Yaddo (1991) and The MacDowell Colony (1990). In 1990 Pieri was also an Artist-in-Residence at Mark diSuvero's Socrates Sculpture Park where she created a 15 ft. sculpture made of rusted and gold leafed can lids. In 2006 Pieri's public art project, Manayunk Stoops: Heart and Home, a series of 9 seating elements fabricated in Italian tesserae, was installed along the Manayunk towpath through the Association for Public Art's New Land Marks Program. Since 2001 Pieri has completed 12 murals working with Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program. Since 2008 she has completed 7 murals in an elementary school in College Station, Texas. In 2005 Pieri founded the Cooke Museum of Art, modeled after the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Jay Cooke Elementary School in North Philadelphia.
Pieri has been a Teaching Artist at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for 21 years. She also taught for 4 years for The Barnes Foundation.

www.dianepieri.com