by Rae Chavez
Paige Pierson’s paintings begin with observation but rarely end there. What starts as a distant idea, a landscape, a structure, or a memory, often transforms through trial and error into something less literal and more atmospheric. She has learned not to cling too tightly to the original concept. As she explains, the finished painting is not always what she initially envisioned, and she has come to embrace that evolution. That openness allows space for imagination to intervene.
Her formal training laid the groundwork for this expansive visual language. A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, with further study at The College of Santa Fe and a BFA in drawing and painting from the University of North Texas, Pierson was immersed in the sweep of art history from the Renaissance to Surrealism to Postmodernism. Those influences linger in subtle ways. Observation informs imagination, and history filters through landscape.
Landscape, particularly that of northern New Mexico, remains inexhaustible.
Living between Española and Chimayó, Pierson is surrounded by the geologic drama of the Rio Grande Rift, a terrain shaped by tectonic force, water, wind, and sun. She describes it as a billion year tectonic story, like pulling gently on a loaf of bread and watching it split in the middle. To the west rises the memory of a massive supervolcano, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains continue their slow uplift and erosion. The basin itself feels alive with time.
Layered onto that geology are at least 9,000 years of human presence, from nomadic hunters and Ancestral communities to the Spanish colonial period. Just miles from her home stands Plaza del Cerro, its history stretching back to 1730. The adobe architecture and concentrated sense of place feel unlike anywhere else. Having grown up in Oklahoma City and Dallas, Pierson remembers feeling awe when she first encountered this landscape and its history. That awe continues to animate her work.
Her paintings carry layers of geologic, historical, and emotional resonance. The process itself mirrors accumulation. Pierson works from a vast archive of imagery, including her own photographs and unexpected digital sources. She grids her canvases meticulously, translating image to surface square by square. Transparent earth orange washes ground the composition before successive passes of paint build depth and structure. Five, sometimes ten layers may develop. If something feels off, she will wipe it down entirely and begin again.
Music accompanies the ritual, David Bowie, Hans Zimmer, and Max Richter underscoring the rhythm of repetition and revision. The work is rarely relaxed, she admits, but it is grounded in expertise. She paints in the margins of a full life, working mornings and weekends while transitioning from her full time career as a psychotherapist in Los Alamos. Even the finishing details are collaborative. Her husband crafts custom frames, and trusted colleagues contribute to the presentation of her work.
Her newest body of paintings feel like both a culmination and a threshold. She describes the work as building, more disciplined, more decisive, and less tethered to earlier anxieties. Certain subjects may recede for a time, while others crystallize into homage. Meanwhile, she experiments with materials such as tinted gessoed panels and sisal rope, testing how far the work can stretch while remaining authentically hers.
Cohesion in an exhibition matters to Pierson. A show must feel architected and unified through subject, palette, scale, or presentation. Her upcoming Guadalupe Street Feature represents her first solo show at Blue Rain Gallery, a personal litmus test as she recalibrates her professional life. The opportunity to fully dream up paintings and their presentation is both thrilling and terrifying, and it marks an important next step in her artistic trajectory.
Among the works in this current body, two stand out as especially meaningful, "Ghost Talus" and "I Was Born in La Plaza del Cerro." "Ghost Talus," a landscape of Ghost Ranch, is singular within the show and intentionally time rich. Painting geology takes time, and emotional depth requires patience. The result is otherworldly yet grounded, a meditation on stone and scale.
"I Was Born in La Plaza del Cerro" reaches even deeper into history. The painting incorporates the specific color language of a Rio Grande style blanket, informed through consultation with regional experts. At its center stands an older gentleman rendered with stoic gravity, an embodiment of memory and place. The work converses not only with architecture and textile tradition, but with literature and lived geography as well, from the Santa Cruz and Española valleys to the crossroads of the Camino Real and the Old Spanish Trail.
Ultimately, Pierson hopes her paintings offer viewers something resonant and lasting. She wants the work to become a fixture in someone’s home, to provide peace or awaken a memory that cannot be fully articulated. That sense of recognition without explanation is what she strives to create.
Blue Rain Gallery is honored and excited to showcase Paige Pierson’s newest works in her upcoming Guadalupe Street Feature, on view March 13 to 26. This exhibition marks an important moment in her evolving practice and invites collectors and visitors alike to experience the layered geology, history, and emotional resonance that define her work.
See all available work by Paige Pierson HERE
