Renee Peirce

Renee Peirce is a self-taught emerging artist, currently living and working in Menifee, California. She’s a former and future San Diegan who reinvented herself as a full-time artist and a writer after her career path that included Environmental Planning and Elementary School Teaching. Peirce works with a variety media, but a special place in her heart belongs to wire sculpture. Bold shapes and simple lines are often a feature of her design.

A Mirror to my Soul  

Whales, especially humpback whales, speak to me. Not in words, but in ways that cannot be measured. Most especially in their embodiment of beauty in sublime imperfection, for I too am imperfect, often feeling even ugly. When these gentle giants pass by our coastal waters, they are distinguished by bumpy faces and splotchy coloration on their fins and tails, many of them covered in barnacles and scars. My mother thinks them unsightly, preferring the sleek lines and beautiful coloration of the orca or the dolphin. “But I think they look like pickles,” she often says in surprise every time I tell her how much I adore them.

But I see beyond that visage, into the deep soul of the creature who inhabits the depths and who offers us the glimpse into their world. Within that spirit, I feel connection to my own experience. 

These creatures are remarkable with their keen intelligence and creative spirits moving through the oceans with a dance of power, sounding deep below, and always returning, as I do, to the surface again – for the breath of life. They create songs for each other. This is my verse for them.

CA

United States