Bio
Anastasia Pelias was born in New Orleans, LA to a Greek immigrant mother and a first generation Greek-American father. She earned her BFA from the Newcomb College of Tulane University and her MFA from the University of New Orleans. Pelias is represented by Ferrara Showman Gallery in New Orleans and has exhibited in galleries and museums internationally throughout a career that spans 40 years. Her work has been featured in publications including Hyperallergic, Burnaway, Artnet news, ArtDaily, Forbes, Pelican Bomb and New Orleans Art Review. Pelias’ paintings and sculpture are held in the permanent collections of Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, Newcomb Art Museum, and McNay Art Museum.
Her work has been featured in notable exhibitions including The Whole Drum Will Sound: Women in Southern Abstraction at Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana, which originated at Newcomb Art Museum and traveled to the Ford Foundation in New York City. Recent projects include a site-specific sculpture and painting installation commissioned by McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, and a 54-foot mural on the Odeon Building in New Orleans, commissioned by Domain Companies. In 2020, Pelias was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Residency. She was a selected artist in the Prospect.5 Triennial, 2021-22, for which she was a recipient of a Mellon Foundation Monuments Grant for her site-specific, multi-sensory installation, It was my pleasure. Her P.5 sculpture was purchased by Arts New Orleans for the City of New Orleans Percent for Art collection, where it has been permanently re-sited to Saint John Park. In 2024, Pelias was invited to create the monumental sculpture ViVa (& the whole garden will bow) for the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by the Helis Foundation.
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist whose studio practice includes oil paintings on canvas, works on paper, sculpture, site-specific installation, video, sound and scent. Whether I’m working with paint, oil stick, charcoal, ink, salvaged wood, fiberglass–I am always interested in showing evidence of the hand of the artist. My process is both intuitive and intentional; I am drawn to content and meaning, abstraction and gesture. The power that color holds, and its ability to viscerally affect the viewer is profound, and is an integral part of my visual vocabulary.
My studio is a sacred place where all things are possible. While I am working, I enter a space where I avoid conscious thought. My process is both intuitive and intentional, and I explore whatever materials or methods are necessary in order to realize an idea. Music often takes on a collaborative role in the making of my work, and is perpetually present in my studio, even when music = silence.
I unapologetically embrace subjects of love, sex, death, destiny, and the human experience - in particular the female experience. My art is intimately rooted in the present and deeply evocative of the past. I draw from personal history, especially the dual cultural identity of my native New Orleans and my ancestral roots in Greece. Greek church and family rituals as well as the rich pageantry of New Orleans culture enveloped me in my Greek-New Orleans upbringing and continue to influence my work. Deep ancestral connections that are omnipresent, that resonate even if they are not always understood, find their way into my work.
The human-size scale of my interactions with a variety of media invites the viewer to become immersed in the painting or sculpture as opposed to simply being an observer. I am interested in the experiential moment(s) when the viewer and the artwork interact, and how the work engages with the surrounding architectural space; whether it be in the studio, a public site, or a gallery.
I believe that art has the potential to be a conduit for healing. I want to make work that is full of emotion and visual pleasure.