Blair Tyler Peters in a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York and Northern California. Her research-based work addresses gender inequity by honoring the achievements of women both past and present with projects incorporating painting, ceramics and textiles. By combining material and research, Blair uses images and symbols historically associated with women to communicate the rich history of female arts while bringing women’s issues into contemporary conversation.
​
Blair’s work can be seen within the context of the Decorative Art Movement, color field painting and 1970’s The Women’s Art Movement. 1970’s feminist artists were acutely aware of the artificiality and repressive power of the societal construct of gender. Their goal was to find an authentic voice to serve as a basis for a new and "liberated" female identity. By giving form to rhetoric through works of art -combining material and cultural history – Blair’s work emphasizes the urgency for women across the globe speak to out for the protection and expansion of their freedoms.
​
Blair was recently selected as an alternate for the 2023 Fulbright Award in the United Kingdom. She received her BFA at the University of Virginia, studied Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design recently earned her master’s degree in Painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Blair has been part of numerous groups shows and was the former owner and head designer of a Landscape Design Company in Marin County, California.
Artist Statement
​
I am an interdisciplinary research-based artist working with paint, sewing and clay. My art explores the rhetorical impact of visual arts by using patterns, inspired by traditional quilts, needlepoint, and vintage textiles, to honor women historically associated with these arts and to challenge the structures and operations that tend to marginalize certain kinds of artistic production while centralizing others. These patterns create a system of communication bringing historical content into contemporary dialogue by abstracting the familiar to reflect a new and evolving narrative. With clay I can express content three dimensionally; with paint the shape is often revealed through the manipulation of material. Layers of thick impasto acrylic paint and medium explore the interaction between space and form, interior and exterior with the use of pattern and repetition. The painting surfaces are formed using textile patterns with various paint techniques and materials and reference American Abstraction, Color Field and 1970s Feminist Art, while creating a contemporary vision to express a lived experience as a woman. The resulting abstract patterning is the spontaneous outcome of process. Using images historically associated with women brings women’s issues into contemporary conversation in an effort to bring awareness to the pervasive inequity issues that women still face today.
CV
