Bernie Fierro, member artist & board member
After 25 years as an established artist on Martha’s Vineyard, MA. Bernard Fierro relocated to Arizona, finding ample inspiration in the moods, shapes, and brilliant light of the upper Sonoran desert. During the past 15 years he has created a distinctive body of work in both oil and acrylic- subjects as diverse as desert landscapes, portraits of family and friends, and ranch animals found at his LuckyPup Ranch in the foothills of Tucson’s Rincon Mountains. There he shares twenty horses, five dogs, a barn cat and a pot bellied pig with his wife Heidi. Bernie paints people and animals on commission.
His work playfully strives to communicate unlikeness as well as likeness. It is this sense of whimsy, of inspired imagining, that has made his singular canvasses so popular among collectors.
He shows his work in the Tucson area and, since 1995, has been represented by the Chaparral Fine Arts Gallery in Bozeman, MT.
Bernard Fierro attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as a full time scholarship student from 1956 to 1960. He studied painting and drawing with Walter Stumpfig, Julius Block, Hobson Pittman and Morris Blackburn. In 1959 he was awarded the Cecilia Beaux Portrait Prize and was honored twice with traveling scholarships; the Cresson Award and the Henry Schiedt Memorial Prize which enabled him to study art and travel in Europe in 1959 and 1960 where he was influenced by Velasquez and Goya as well as French and Italian masters.
Bernie has exhibited in Tucson and Tubac, Arizona and is represented by A Gallery of Dreams in Saint David, Arizona.
Bernie won the “Award of Excellence” for established artist with his work “Taking the Sun” at the 2011 Celebrate the Arts!.