Workers at a South Coast museum are putting the finishing touches on a new exhibition which will highlight nearly a decade of an artist’s work.
Painter Michael Pearce has taken over three gallery areas of the Museum of Ventura County “The Secret Paintings.” There are three dozen works which challenge your imagination with their often mythic like characters.
One of the exhibit areas features a series of related paintings starring a parade of young women wearing summer dresses. The curved works surrounds you as you stand in the middle, in what Peace envisions as a tribute to summer. Pearce says the rumor is that if you kiss someone you love in the center of the works, it will lead to fertility, and a baby.
Another work features a stern looking bearded man dressed like an Italian priest. You soon realize that it’s Pearce, in a self-portrait.
Pearce, who’s an art professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, says the exhibition actually shows how his work has evolved over a decade. He's a local arts leader who’s one of the organizers of “The Representational Art Conference,” an international event which brings artists from around the world to Ventura County.
This exhibition, which runs through August 6th at the museum in downtown Ventura, is the kickoff to a national tour for Pearce’s collection.
