Oscar Pearson

Oscar Pearson (b. 1993 Grover Beach, CA) is recognized for his paintings that operate between depiction and abstraction, his work has been described as inquisitive, and playful, with a distinct west coast vibe. Pearson is a California-based artist who makes both studio paintings and murals. He began his art career working as an artist assistant, and then decided to pursue a BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach (2021). He co-founded and co-managed The Place on PCH, an arts coalition that offers an international artist residency program in Oceano, California. Pearson has exhibited in various group shows in Southern California at The Santa Barbara Arts Fund Gallery, Flatline Gallery in Long Beach, Peripheral Space in Los Angeles, Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, and The Elverhøj Museum in Solvang, CA. His mural, Generosity, is part of the permanent campus art collection at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Oscar currently lives and works in Grover Beach, CA as a full-time studio artist.

Feelings ranging from celebratory to confinement materialize in Oscar Pearson’s body of work. His paintings often emphasize a figure, sometimes human sometimes animal and its relationship to the immediate environment. Much of Oscar’s works straddle a precarious balance between naturalism and formalism. He is increasingly concerned with the internal structure of pictures but dissatisfied with the intentional “purity” of movements like Geometric abstraction. Oscar instead inoculates those “pure” impulses with active bodies, personal experiences, eroticism, and humor to tangle with formal presuppositions.

In this particular work a dog takes center-stage eagerly chasing its own tail in a dizzying frenzy. The dog, Oscar relates, is “a lot like the human being, overly domesticated and burdened with a feeling that they should be doing something but with nobody showing them what to do they run around in circles hoping that they are going to figure it out.”