Florence Miller Pierce

Florence Pierce was a New Mexico-based abstract artist, where she was a staple of the local and national art worlds for nearly 30 years. Pierce created her richly nuanced, monochromatic pieces by layering resin and rich pigments onto mirrored Plexiglas to create what some have called a “living embodiment of light.”

Pierce was born in Washington, DC in 1918. At age 18, she traveled to Taos, New Mexico, to stay with her grandparents and study with noted artist Emil Bisstram. Pierce returned to Taos two years later and joined the Transcendental Painting Group, a collective of spiritual conceptual artists interested in stretching the boundaries of two-dimensional art.

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, represents and exhibits Pierce’s collected work, which has also been featured in solo exhibitions at the Amarillo Art Museum, the Boritzer/Gray Gallery in Santa Monica, and the Kiyo Higashi Gallery in Los Angeles, among others. Her work is also part of several permanent collections including the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the Albuquerque Museum, and the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. Pierce died in Albuquerque in 2007.