Parker Gallery is open Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm
Maija Peeples-Bright
Inquire CV

Maija Peeples-Bright (b. 1942 in Riga, Latvia, lives and works in Rocklin, CA) is one of the few women artists associated with Northern California’s Funk and Nut art movements of the late 1960s and ‘70s. In 1965 she graduated with a masters degree in art from UC Davis and had her first solo exhibition at the renowned Candy Store Gallery in nearby Folsom, CA, where she exhibited annually until 1991. Her wildly inventive practice comprises compositions bustling with animals of all kinds, forming surreal, imaginative landscapes in audacious impasto. Adding a growing number of animals—lovingly referred to by the artist as ‘beasties’—to her visual lexicon with each passing year, they represent alternate realities, infusing gaiety and a sense of the absurd into impossible scenarios. Highly distinctive, her animal groupings relish in the extreme, often taking up every inch of the canvas; multiplying her subjects into dizzying arrangements, they comprise entire worlds.

Recent solo exhibitions include those held at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2020 and 2023), Nicelle Beauchene, New York (2019) and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Nuts and Who’s: A Candy Store Sampler, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2023), Clay Pop Los Angeles, Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023), Funk You Too!: Humor and Irreverence in Modern and Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY (2023), The Candy Store: Funk, Art, and Other Art With A Kick, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA (2022), The Interior, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY (2021), Strange, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2019), and Landscape Without Boundaries: Selections from the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, curated by Dan Nadel, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA. Her work is included in several permanent collections, including the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; and the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinatti, OH.

Perfect bound, 380 pages
9 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches (23.49 x 26.67 cm)
Essays by Michael Duncan, Cat Kron
Design by Tully
Edition of 500
Parker Gallery
September 2020

$65

KQED — September 11th, 2023
8 Over 80: The Contagious Joy of Maija Peeples-Bright’s Animal-Filled World
The New York Times — September 10th, 2021
Still Independent, and Still Exceptional
Carla — November 1st, 2020
Maija Peeples-Bright's Anti-Hierarchical Utopias and the Art of World-Building
Art & Object — October 23rd, 2020
5 Not-to-Be-Missed Los Angeles Solo Shows
Contemporary Art Daily — October 11th, 2020
Maija Peeples-Bright at Parker Gallery
KCRW Greater LA — September 24th, 2020
Two New Art Shows to Check Out Amid the Pandemic
KCRW Art Insider — September 15th, 2020
Maija Peeples-Bright at Parker Gallery
Hyperallergic — September 8th, 2020
Your Concise Los Angeles Art Guide for September 2020
Contemporary Art Daily — December 20th, 2017
Parker Gallery at NADA Miami
ARTnews — December 7th, 2017
34 Artworks I Would Like to Acquire from NADA Miami
Contemporary Art Daily — August 6th, 2017
“Nut Art” at Parker Gallery
Hyperallergic — July 14th, 2017
Revisiting the Witty Work of 1970s Bay Area Nut Artists
Contemporary Art Review LA — June 15th, 2017
Nut Art at Parker Gallery
Style Magazine — October 1st, 2012
maija peeples-bright: Fantastically Funky
The Sacramento Bee — July 6th, 2012
Funky figures inhabit ‘World of Woof.’
Sacramento Magazine — August 1st, 1980
Enough to Make You Smile
Lifestyle Magazine — August 1st, 1975
Maija Woof Peeples: creations from dreams
The San Francisco Chronicle — July 27th, 1968
A Beastly Victorian
Parker Gallery is open Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm