michele pierson studio
Michele Pierson (b. 1993) is a Philadelphia-based contemporary realist painter whose work explores expanses of space, light, form, and matter through a material and conceptual inquiry into the natural, technological, and cosmic. Her practice holds the tension and connection between the organic and constructed, the celestial and the rooted.
Through surrealist depictions of landscapes, altars, intimate interiors, and portraiture, Michele’s paintings investigate the alignment between the physical with the metaphysical in scenes that are both representational and ethereal. Her compositions bring together natural elements, cosmic motifs, tonal palettes, and structural symbolism.
The color blue’s dual associations: the boundlessness of sky and sea, and the infrastructure of code, blueprints, and circuitry. The cosmos as both subject and metaphor—a site of wonder and a scale-shifting reminder of matter, impermanence, and awe. Iridescence and luminous textures explore light as glimmering energy—fleeting, perceptual, and activated through movement. These ephemeral elements are grounded by materials shaped by the earth: stones, shells, flowers, plants, and metals that carry ancestral, earthly memory and evoke cycles of erosion, growth, and return.
Contemplative and intricately detailed, her paintings serve as meditations on interiority, ritual, and conscious attunement to infinite realms—accessed through reflection, dreaming, and reverent attention.
