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About Artist:
R.T. Pearce was born into a working class family in the city of Birmingham, England in 1956. Rising out of the midlands of Great Britain, Birmingham served as heart of the industrial revolution as it swept across England in the mid-nineteenth century. The tensions created in Victorian society by this tidal change were reflected in the art movements of the day, and these movements were to play a profound role in Pearce's artistic development. Birmingham's history of metalworking dates back to the middle ages. With an elaborate system of canals for transportation, the city attracted many craftsmen and became a center for the making of guns, pins, screws, toys and jewelry. The jewelry industry built a stronghold in the center of the city. This jewelry quarter, known as Hochley, ultimately developed into one of the greatest concentrations of jewelry-related businesses in Europe. It was here that young Pearce obtained his first job, a jewelry apprenticeship at the age of fourteen. Working with methods and hand tools almost identical to those used over one hundred years earlier, Pearce quickly learned how to fashion three-dimensional designs in clay, and the techniques necessary to manufacture the designs in metal. Pearce spent next fifteen years at his trade, and as his competency grew, so did his aspirations. Visits to the Birmingham Museum had engendered an admiration for the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their constellation of associates. Edward Burne-Jones, one of the latter associates of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had been born in Birmingham, and had supported a group of artists loosely influenced by Pre-Raphaelite tenets and style. == Pearce's work reveals influences not only from the Pre-Raphaelites, but also from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. His devotion to nature naturally led him to incorporate the organic forms that fascinated Art Nouveau artists and architects, and he borrows liberally from Art Deco's use of marble and ivory, know as chryselephantine. Yet he weaves these various styles into one that is uniquely his own. Perhaps his greatest gift is his uncanny ability to breathe life into the fantasy figures he creates. Spending time around these fascinating creatures, one comes to feel that, rather than being inanimate pieces of metal, they are truly alive, invested with the soul of the artist, and just waiting for the right moment to come down off their pedestals and engage us. == Pearce's work reveals influences not only from the Pre-Raphaelites, but also from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. His devotion to nature naturally led him to incorporate the organic forms that fascinated Art Nouveau artists and architects, and he borrows liberally from Art Deco's use of marble and ivory, know as chryselephantine. Yet he weaves these various styles into one that is uniquely his own. Perhaps his greatest gift is his uncanny ability to breathe life into the fantasy figures he creates. Spending time around these fascinating creatures, one comes to feel that, rather than being inanimate pieces of metal, they are truly alive, invested with the soul of the artist, and just waiting for the right moment to come down off their pedestals and engage us.
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