Meet The Artist:

Born in Bountiful, Utah, broadly traveled throughout the United States, Europe and the Far East, Ray Pierotti’s academic studies were art-centric with an emphasis on classical Western music, dance and poetry. Subsequent Informal studies have been in the symbiotic resonances between color, sound and shape.

Firmly rooted in the material world of wave and particle physics and spiritually inclined towards mysticism, Eastern and Western philosophies are continually referenced in  his personal  visual language. “I am drawn to the ephemeral  nature of light.  The source of  both the external and internalized appearances of color in materialized space. Scenes remembered and scenes imagined commingle like the smells, the tastes and the textures of memorable lives.”  Academically, in the discipline of painting, he would be labeled “self taught”.  He recognizes that his tutors have been the thousands of museums, cathedrals, artistic performances, world class libraries and personal acquaintances encountered  over the years in  his  world travels.  

Not comfortable with stylistic labels - though he has developed a recognizable visual language, his emphasis is on multi-layered transparency.  An important muse is the Chinese poet, Loatzu who wrote “...whether a man dispassionately sees to the core of life or passionately sees the surface, the core and the surface are essentially the same, words making them seem different only to express appearance…”

Pierotti believes that in contemporary society, we have relegated the Arts to the role of surface embellishment when in reality its place should be  central to our intellectual, emotional and spiritual development and integrated into our learning process. Science has distorted our perception into either/ors. Art’s purpose is to bypass the scientific mind which is limited to the finite and is usually described in localisms.  The Arts take us to the heart’s intelligence where perceptions are infinite, beyond either/ors, towards unification.

His paintings are formed thru a multi-layering process of several mediums on untreated natural surfaces, and not unlike the musical instruments on which the musician sounds the performance, the underlying presence of inherent characteristics of both the material and the maker are inseparable from the whole. The process mirrors one’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual individuation.

A brief biographical sketch

Photo Courtesy Of Southwest Georgia Living

  • Born in Bountiful, Utah and educated in the Davis County public  schools. Pierotti evidenced, early in life, musical and visual artistic gifts.  Following graduation from High School he entered
    the military and served two years in Korea and Japan.
    The experience informed his early artistic sensibilities and following the service he moved to France where he completed his first undergraduate degree at La Sorbonne. He returned
    to Utah and to the University of Utah where he completed a B.F.A., and an M.M in music composition and musicology.  

  • He moved to New York City in 1963 where he supported his career as a painter by teaching design at the New York School of Visual Arts while serving as Assistant Director of the American Craft Museum.  He later became director of national programs for the American Craft Council.  He had his first solo exhibition in New York’s Sawdust Gallery followed by exhibitions at the South Carolina Museum of Art, the Hunter Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museum of the University of Idaho and was included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the USA.

  • He accepted the directorship of The Arrowmont School, and an academic appointment asassociate professorship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His exhibition schedule included the University of the South, Fairfax ArtAcademy, Morristown Art Center and numerous solo exhibitions in private galleries.  He was invited to open up and direct the SawtoothSchool of Visual Arts in Winston-Salem, NC  with solo exhibitions at The Southeaster Center for Contemporary Art, the Greenhill Center for the Arts along with additional solo and group exhibitions throughout the country.

  • Invited to reopen the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts  (the South’s McDowell Colony) in North Georgia, he moved his studio to Atlanta and opened a second large studio in Shellman, GA where he now resides..  His list of solo exhibitions in private galleries and museums along with corporate and public commissions has led to a successful career as an independent  studio artist.

    Ray is catalogued in the Archives of American Art, and listed in Who’s Who in International Art & Design. His paintings and drawings are included in over 280 corporate, private and public collections throughout he USA, South American, Europe and the Far East.