Pia Stern                                   

On Water

April 11 to May 12, 2007                                                    

Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 11, 6 – 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm

11 am – 8 pm every Second Wednesday of the month

Cheryl Pelavin is pleased to announce our first exhibition with Pia Stern.  A native of Southern California, Stern has recently returned home after 10 years of teaching at the University of Hawaii. As a student she studied closely with Elmer Bischoff, and the influence of her abstract expressionist training is apparent in the artist’s enthusiastic and lush approach to her medium.

Stern is concerned with the element of water, the sea, as the cradle for both life and death. While her palette reflects all that is warm and living - earth, sea, sky and creatures - the pictographs running through the paintings pay homage to the darker side of life and survival.

Possible, 39 x 53

I use oils and drawing materials in an intuitive manner. Like an archeologist, I approach the canvas as if on a ‘dig,’ waiting for the meaning of the piece to reveal itself. My work is a disciplined activity akin to meditation or prayer – an activity that enables me to feel fully engaged with life on a spiritual level.

Many of my works incorporate symbols scratched into the surface; images of ladders, crosses, animals, windows, waves or moons. My family background (my parents escaped Nazi Germany) has sensitized me not only to the beauty, but also to the pathos in life.  Much of the work is existential in nature, appearing to deal with the tension between light and dark - both metaphorically and formally.

 Over the years, my interest has turned increasingly to our tenuous relationship with the natural world.  Water in particular has become a potent image for me, symbolizing the often uncontrollable internal and external forces in our lives. Both creator and destroyer, it reminds us of the limits of our power and that we are all voyagers: our fates bind us to one another as well as to nature.