Bio

Judith Peck is a Washington, DC area allegorical figurative artist who has made her life’s work to paint about history and healing, using a variety of methods and experimental techniques to achieve a diverse range of visual and tactile results that validate a strong narrative.  She has been awarded by the Masur Museum of Art, the Alexandria Museum of Art, The Washington County Museum of Fine Art, the Lore Degenstein Gallery Competition at Susquehanna University, The Butler Institute of American Art, and Florida A&M University’s Pinnacle Competition, shown in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, Context Art Basel in Miami and The Art of Paper show in New York as well as in major galleries and had numerous solo shows. She was awarded the Strauss Fellowship Grant from Fairfax County, Virginia as well as an International Artist-in-Residence in Salzburg Austria.

Her paintings have been featured numerous times in American Art Collector Magazine, Poets /Artists, The Artist’s Magazine, iARTisas, Combustus and the books Tradition and Transformation and the Ashen Rainbow, by Ori Z. Soltes, as well as the Kress Project book published by the Georgia Museum of Art.

Judith Peck’s work is collected internationally and can be found in many private collections as well as in the permanent public collections of the Museo Arte Contemporanea, Sicilia, the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, Penn College, Susquehanna University, Montgomery County Public Art Trust Contemporary Work on Paper Collection, the Alexandria Commission on the Arts in Virginia, the Museum of Fine Arts Washington County in MD, the University of Maryland GC Art International Collection, the Garrett Museum of Art in Illinois as well as the District of Columbia’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank.

Artist Statement (General Body of Work)

I look at the things happening in the world today, and what history has taught us about our broken world and I can’t stop being drawn into the unreason of it all.  What I try to express in my art is that we all have the same hopes and dreams as anyone, anywhere at anytime in the present or throughout history.  I depict how, despite our rifts, we might experience healing in a broken world, and how that undertaking is universally human.

I’m looking for the binding power-opposite of mob mentality-our mutual connections.  Although we can all be overwhelmed and feel helpless, the human spirit always possesses hope, even in the most desperate of circumstances.  I would be happy if I can show a glimmer of our broken yet beautiful human experience. I use an individual model to represent a life’s path and the broken world we navigate.  

Artist Statement for the Sycamore Tree series

I am obsessed with a certain massive sycamore tree living by the Potomac River near my home.  At the minimum I visit it weekly during every season. Recently it crept into my subconscious and I began a whole series of paintings.  I’ve tried to paint its’ dignity and majesty as well the small deaths and growth, the resilience that is apparent in the face of drought, flooding, erosion, pollution and wind conditions. I see this tree as a microcosm of the earth as well as an allegory of our lives.

Trees are so rich with allegory, symbolism, parts are dying as they grow and renew. They are seen as symbols of strength, resilience and growth, as well as being connected to the natural cycles of life and death. They are established in the earth with a great network of strong root systems. Home, shade and food for many animals, trees give shelter as well as produce life giving oxygen.