Darcie Peet

"Round the next bend in the trail, over the next hill...seeking the quintessential elements of the 'wild places' that I explore and love." Hailing from Oak Park, Illinois, raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a love of horses and the west took Peet to Colorado as a child and again in the early ‘’60s. For over twenty-five years Peet has called the Colorado Rockies (Copper Mountain) and Tucson’s Sonora Desert home different times of the year. Many childhood summers were spent exploring the Chicago Art Institute and experiencing feature exhibits by Andrew Wyeth and Monet. Traveling to Paris offered the opportunity to further immerse Peet in the art of the Impressionists. The teeming color, energy, and endless dance of light and atmosphere remain today as vivid and enduring influences. Likewise, the directness and spontaneity of the Plein Air movement in California and the West; the bold light, shadow, and architectural form of Caravaggio and Carl Rungius; the fresh, fluid work of Russian-American Impressionist Nicolai Fechin as well as contemporary painters Richard Schmid, Jim Reynolds, Oleg Stavrowsky and C. W. Mundy serve as inspirations to Peet. Whether a five-day pack trip into Canyon de Chelly; hiking to timberline to capture a painting of late spring snow; braving the desert sun of Saguaro National Monument or tucked out of the wind behind scraggly, alpine evergreen high on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, the extraordinary diversity of terrain, climate, seasons and light of the Rockies and desert provide never-ending sources of adventure and inspiration. Most recently canoeing, kayaking, biking, or hiking the Canadian Rockies, Alaska, Glacier National Park, California wine country, the Sonoma Coast, and winter in Monument Valley offers stunning raw material for future paintings.