Bio

Pearl Bryant was born in Pensacola, FL, and grew up on the Gulf Coast. She earned her BFA in Studio Art with a focus in painting and drawing at Auburn University. She currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

Pearl’s recent paintings focus on themes of maximalism and reuse referencing mass consumption and aesthetics. She uses acrylic and nail polish palettes replete with stereotypically hyper-feminized colors and melds them with found objects and minute drawn details.

In 2017, Pearl painted a 6’ x 12’ abstract mural on the exterior facade of a new multi-faceted arts complex in southwest Atlanta, The Bakery, where she then served as the Gallery Manager through May of 2019. Her painting H.V. IV was selected and purchased as part of the Fulton County Fine Arts Acquisition Program for 2019. H.V. IV was subsequently shown in the October 2019 large-scale group exhibition The High Rise Show in downtown Atlanta where she also showed additional work through ShowerHaus Gallery. H.V. IV is now on display as part of Fulton County’s public collection at Adams Park Library in southwest Atlanta. 

Pearl’s first solo exhibition debuted in 2019. Her painting H.V. II won Director’s Choice at Georgia Artists, a statewide juried exhibition. She has shown work in juried and group exhibitions around Atlanta and the U.S. since 2016. In January of 2020, she exhibited work in the Valdosta National juried exhibition at Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery at Valdosta State University. Her work was most recently on view at Rocky Mount Imperial Centre for the Arts and Sciences in Rocky Mount, NC and in Norfolk, VA, for Persistence II, a national juried exhibition of women artists. Her work is currently on display at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod, South Yarmouth, MA, as part of the Abstractions juried exhibition. Her work will also be in the forthcoming 2021 Callanwolde Juried Exhibition in Atlanta, GA.

In her daily studio practice, Pearl employs what she calls “trash walks” to discover the plethora of found objects she uses in her work. This practice aligns with her use of mindfulness and intentionality as methods to counter the frantic energy of life, as well as being rooted in an ecofeminist perspective.

Pearl was a founding member of The Bakery in southwest Atlanta in 2017. She served as the Gallery Manager for the in-house gallery from 2017 until May of 2019 when she stepped back to focus on her studio practice. During her time there, she planned the complete renovation of the exhibition space and wrote and implemented the organization’s first Request for Proposals, leaving 10+ months of exhibition programming curated at her departure.

At the beginning of this new decade, Pearl’s work is moving forward through the employ of dramatic scale and new, colorful sculptures made of found objects, evolving her work into its next iteration.