Michael Pearce

Art commentator Joseph Bravo said, "He’s reinventing representational art for the 21st century, and he brings as much concept to bear as any post-modern contemporary artist would do..."

Ten of Pearce's Secret Paintings are in the collection of the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles.

Pearce is author of books about art and aesthetics.

His Kitsch, Propaganda, and the American Avant-Garde is a history of the avant-garde, tracking its development as proto-communist propaganda in revolutionary France to its 20th century incarnation as propaganda for American liberal democracy.

His Art in the Age of Emergence "delivers sensible emergent aesthetics, explaining the processes that happen in human minds when we share ideas as works of art, skewering the orthodoxies of contemporary art with pragmatic wisdom about why representational art thrives in the new millennium."

Michael Pearce (born 1965) is an English, California-based figurative painter and author.

Michael J. Pearce was born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1965.

He is a figurative painter and an outspoken proponent of what he terms "skill-based art".

Writing for KCET, Sarah Linn describes Pearce's painting as "[m]assive, mythical and brimming with allegorical subtext [. . . that] demonstrate a subtle alchemy all their own -- the transformation of ordinary oil paint and canvas into narratives that embrace the magic and romance of an earlier era."

"Much of Pearce’s art is figurative and allegorical. He uses oil paint to transform canvases into stories that embrace the magic and romance of an earlier era. He uses conceptual themes that capture his audience by encouraging their individual imaginative interpretation of the events he has painted. There’s meaning here — a reconstruction of ideas bigger than self — that makes these paintings feel greater than their already large size."

The works are marked by the use of symbolism, male and female imagery and celestial references to address the mystical relationship between man and God.

They are "a beguiling mix of old-school technique and fresh narrative possibility".

Pearce paints in oils on canvas, sometimes stretched over a wooden panel, creating allegorical or narrative figurative compositions of mystical or alchemical subjects.

His installation work was typically made from simple materials like wood, greenware clay and beeswax, and was sourced from prehistory and alchemy.

Since 1990 Pearce has lived in California, having left Los Angeles to move to Thousand Oaks in 2008, he is now a Ventura County resident.

He is married to art historian Aihua Zhou.

He is a graduate of Dartington College of Arts, 1990, BA (Hons) Theatre; The University of Southern California, 1992 MFA Theatrical Design; and Plymouth University, 2008, PhD Using Prehistoric British Art and Architecture as a Model for Contemporary Art.

Between 2005 and 2016, Pearce was curator of CLU's Kwan Fong Gallery where his programming emphasized the work of representational artists and interdisciplinary exhibits.

Speaking about his 2008 The Principle installation, Pearce said: "Alchemical imagery is so rich and mysterious that it can't fail to be exciting to an artist."

After 2008, Pearce became solely interested in oil painting, and began work on a series of new allegorical figurative works.

He served as Chair of the Art Department between 2008 and 2013.

In 2009 he combined actual alchemical experimentation with his artwork, showing his Cabinet of Alchemical Wonders in an exhibit in Glendale, California, including a reflux still within the centre of a large glowing tree.

His body of work connects him to his study of natural philosophy, an area he explored when studying early archaeological texts by William Stukeley and John Aubrey, whose eclectic writings led him to explore alchemical symbolism, steering the direction of his work toward mystical allegory.

In 2010, he introduced an atelier-style system to the CLU Art Department, in which each faculty member was provided with their own studio space on campus, welcoming their students to study alongside them as they lead by example in the production of their own work.

The first of the group was exhibited in August 2011 at California Lutheran University in an exhibit titled "The New Romantic Figure", with prominent Californian artists including Alexey Steele, Jeremy Lipking, Tony Pro, Mia Tavonatti, Cyn McCurry, Peter Adams (President of the California Art Club) and Michael Lynn Adams.

Looking back to the past for inspiration in his 2012 exhibit "Emblemata" he used 15th-century emblem books and tarot cards as source material, and presented art historical lectures on the Magician and the Fool archetypes.

In December 2014, the California Art Club named Pearce "man of the year" and presented him with the William & Julia Bracken Wendt Award for his service to representational art.

In 2015, he painted a new group of 15 paintings called "Love", which caught the attention of writer David Molesky, who published an interview with him in Juxtapoz Magazine.

Pearce described the paintings as "figures emerging from light", and said that he was writing another book "exploring the ideas of kitsch and sentiment" tentatively titled "Never Nothing".

Pearce created a series of large-scale paintings which draw from alchemical symbolism, allegorical imagery and themes from 15th-century emblem books and tarot cards.

In June 2017 these paintings, along with Pearce's series The Grail Watchers, began a tour crossing the mainland United States.

The Secret Paintings opening reception was held at the Museum of Ventura County 2 June 2017.

Holly Moye of Oklahoma City University's Hulsey Gallery said: "The Secret Paintings strike a chord for a new kind of art moving forward from the weary pessimism that has dominated international art for the past century."

Many of the paintings were presented in dramatic tabernacle frames that replicated those found on 19th Century Pre-Raphaelite works, whose wet-white painting methods he researched and used in the production of some of the canvases.

Although he uses Victorian and Renaissance studio techniques, he is determinedly contemporary, saying: "We can't be painting for the 19th century - we have to paint for the 21st century...."

In 2019 Pearce began writing articles about the need for a new art criticism that dealt with the issues interesting conservatives in 21st-century representational art, arguing that post-modern culture had eliminated the avant-garde hegemony and created a bubble-bath of multiple art-worlds, each with their own gatekeepers and criticism.

In winter 2019 he began writing regularly for MutualArt magazine, producing articles about art, focusing mostly on representational painters.

He has also written articles for American Fine Art, Fine Art Connoisseur, Quillette, American Art Collector, Artists on Art, Combustus and Postmodern Times.

His piece about the artist Dino Valls is the most read article on the Combustus website.

Pearce is Professor of Figurative Drawing and Painting at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.