January 2001
Peggy Bates
Pbates@idt.net
The theme for Bates's paintings is water and its mysterious connotations. This conceptual relationship affects the choice of materials; plastic (acrylic mediums) are chosen to imitate the "real"' and exaggerate the phenomena of water bodies. Process is crucial to her work; working with a unique technique rather than traditional methods of painting with brushes, acrylic paints are manipulated by pouring and pooling on to the canvas. This method creates swirling effects of ripples and patterns, articulating what appears as organic matter.
Peggy Bates received her Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York city in 1991. Since graduation she participated in many exhibitions in the United States and in Europe. Her last solo exhibition was at the John Gibson Gallery in New York City in 1999. Reviews of her work were published in Art in America, CitySearch.com, and in Cover magazine. Additionally, Peggy Bates was featured in Zingmagazine and in Buixenpost (Netherlands). She has been the recipient of numerous awards including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Netherland-America Foundation. Additionally, Bates has received many residency fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Millay, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and at the Stichting Kunst en Comlex, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe, Japan and Thailand.
