PEGGY HERING
Art Works
NATURE INSPIRED * WATERCOLORS OILS * ACRYLICS * PASTELS
Peggy Hering, Painter/Illustrator
I have always enjoyed making pictures. Art has been in my life from a young age. I remember watching my father model storybook characters for a children's theme park, paint religious murals in churches and spend evenings doing pencil drawings on the backs of old art books. He was a self-taught artist, learning by copying the old masters, copies of which eventually hung in every room of our home. Eating dinner with the "Last Supper" above the buffet, the "Mona Lisa" on the wall on one side of the room and Rembrandt's, "Man in the Golden Helmet" on the other, was not uncommon.
Whether by exposure to my father's style or by innate expression, realism had always been natural and comfortable to me and easily became my way of visual expression. Figures or faces may appear, but most often some element of nature. My interest has always been to make art that speaks of the spiritual context of life and our connected oneness with all beings, to provoke a contemplation of life/nature and trigger thoughts that extend outside the work, be it through the use of color and design element or through the juxtaposition or association of different images seen in a new relationship. My art is about beauty, harmony, balance, awareness.
“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but must always participate in the swell of the ocean, so we can never experience
life by ourselves, but must always share the experience of life that takes place all around us.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” ~ Joseph Campbell
About
Peggy Hering was born in PIttsburgh, Pennsylvania into a family of artists. From childhood, painting and drawing were a natural part of life. She studied art at the Pennsylvania State University where she received her BS in art education and there continued with graduate studies in painting. She worked as an educator, graphic designer and illustrator and painter.
Her career as a painter blossomed when in 1976 she made Nassau her home and the Bahamian people a full-time subject for her art. There she participated in numerous group shows and in 1984 held her first one-woman exhibition. Her work was reproduced into her own 1979 limited edition, "Images of the Bahamas", commissioned for the 1984 Finco Grantstown Limited Ed. Collection, and compiled as a portfolio of scenes for Resorts Int., Bahamas, as well as for interiors of the (now former) Paradise Island Villas on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
Other published works and commissions include greeting cards, cook book covers, and in advertising campaigns for such companies as Jordan Marsh of Florida, Resorts Int., Bahamas and the Family Guardian Insurance of Nassau. For ten years she was illustrator and graphic designer for the Nassau Guardian Newspaper. During her nine year Bahamian residence her original works found their way to private and corporate collections throughout the world.
After returning to the States in 1985, she joined the studios of the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, participated in numerous group and several solo shows. As a member of the Woman's Caucus for Art, she co-produced and co-hosted a 24 part educational T.V. series, "Way of the Woman Artist", interviewing South Florida woman artists.
Her current work has focused on personal exploration and commissions while working in her Coconut Grove, Florida studio. Island influence is still seen in her painting while she works on nature -inspired canvases. Her techniques include oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastel and various drawing media.
“To have a sacred place is an absolute necessity for anybody today,” writer Joseph Campbell once said. “You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so, where you do not know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody or what they owe you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.”