Pearce 2015

ANNE AUSTIN PEARCE: This is How I Feel When I Think About You

“Throughout my travels I happily accepted that the only sense of pattern, schedule, or habit that I needed in order to provide me a sense of place, balance and self was the process of making work. This truth allowed me to readily breathe in the new, bright, and unknown.”
– Anne Austin Pearce

Anne Austin Pearce has always used her life experiences as a guide to understand herself and the world around her. A thoughtful, deliberate observer and exuberant participant, Pearce has absolute trust in the process of drawing and painting to translate and transform her interactions into pure visual language.

When Pearce began a 15-month sabbatical from teaching at Rockhurst University, in May of 2013, she left behind her sense of place, routine, and comfort. This is How I Feel When I Think About You explores her participation in artist residencies in Wyoming, Mexico and Mauritius where Pearce created three distinct but interrelated series, each related to specific geography and the journey as a whole.

Shaped by the unfamiliarity of place, Pearce reinvented her art practice as each step of her voyage revealed new ways in which our internal senses impact our experience of the natural world.

Pearce received a BFA with an emphasis in printmaking from the University of Kansas in 1990 before continuing her graduate studies at James Madison University where she received her MFA. Pearce has exhibited nationally including at the Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art + Design, Miami, FL; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Corcoran School of Art and Design, Washington D.C.; the Drawing Center, New York City. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Spencer Museum of Art.

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