BETHANY PIERCE

"In my still life work, I’m inspired by daily rituals and commonplace pleasures: birthday cakes, flowers from the garden, dinner with friends. Though the things I paint are usually known for being beautiful or indulgent, they are also prone to rapid decay. In some paintings, I work quickly, hoping to capture what is so tempting or fresh before the still life begins to decompose. In other works, I come back to the same arrangement again and again only to find it changed for every sitting. Rather than editing out these alterations, I respond to them. The result is a painting in which many moments in the life of the subject have been emotionally and visually compressed into one image – a kind of still time lapse. 

I consider this practice a modern interpretation of the Vanitas tradition. The Vanitas is a work of art that symbolizes the transience of life and is perhaps best exemplified by a genre of still life painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the 17th century. These opulent still life arrangements featured objects that represented death and change and fragility, things like wisps of smoke, spoiling fruit, and flowers that had begun to fade. 

Historically, the Vanitas was an exhortation, often patronized by the church, to scorn earthly appetites. I’m more interested in how the same meditation can remind us to stay in the present – to attend to the physical experience of this world and cherish moments of pleasure or happiness, which are all the more precious because they are fleeting."

Bethany Pierce is a writer and painter working out of Asheville, North Carolina. In her visual art, she explores pleasure, beauty, and temporality, finding meditations on these subjects in both common daily objects and in nature. Whether working in classical still life techniques or more spontaneous abstractions, her paintings are known for their optical effects of light, created by the layering of transparent color. Bethany has exhibited throughout the Southeast as well as in Ontario, Austin, and New York.