FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Stephanie Pierce, assistant professor of painting in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has received a $25,000 grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. The foundation makes awards to artists through its Painters and Sculptors Grant Program, which recognizes painters and sculptors creating work of exceptional quality. Pierce is one of 25 chosen for 2014.

 “This is one of the most prestigious awards for painters,” said Jeannie Hulen, associate professor of ceramics and chair of the Department of Art. “Stephanie is an exceptional artist and a tremendous asset to our department.”

The foundation invites nominations of artists deserving more recognition for their creative achievements and whose practice would significantly benefit from the grant. Nominees may be at any stage in their career. Images of the candidates' works are viewed for consideration through an anonymous process by a jury panel. Nominators and jurors include prominent visual artists and curators.

Pierce’s painting seeks an intersection between perception and abstraction using the phenomenon of light, space and form as personal metaphor. Working from perception, she seeks to convey a sense of the visual as it is unfolding into forms and space that are at once material and immaterial. The accumulation of observed moments stand as fragments of color, light and location, as they change with the progression of each day.

Pierce has said that her paintings “reveal passages of change, revelatory shifts and a sensation that forms have just begun to come together and may shift and disappear—a brief presence that threatens to fall apart.

“Each painting deals with its own problem, idea, or reference, including literature, layered reality, memory, and interrelationships between light, time, and sound (music). Objects that I depict are those that I see as symbolic/ transformative, such as a window, radio, a plant, or a book.”

Her portfolio includes paintings, drawings, prints and more that have been shown in more than a dozen states. Her art has been displayed in more than 20 solo and group exhibitions in galleries across the nation. She is represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects in New York.

Pierce joined the University of Arkansas as tenure-track faculty member in 2012 after serving six years as an instructor in the department. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from the Art Institute of Boston and a Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the University of Washington.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation is an artist-endowed non-profit organization created to celebrate the legacy of Joan Mitchell, a painter and printmaker who was part of the American abstract expressionist movement. The foundation also works to broaden the recognition of artists and their essential contributions to communities and society and expand Mitchell’s vision to support the aspirations and development of diverse contemporary artists.