Danny P. Pierce was born in 1920 in Woodlake, California. He moved to Los Angeles to attend
the Art Center School in 1939 and Chouinard Art Institute from 1940-1941, then worked as an
artist for a novelty manufacturing company. Pierce was drafted in 1942 and served in the
army during World War II from 1942-1945. From 1947-1948, he attended the American Art School
in New York City, studying with William Gropper, Jack Levine, and Raphael Soyer. In 1948, he
left school and moved to the Adirondack Mountains to paint, while living off illustrations
he did for pulp magazines. Pierce returned to New York and attended the Brooklyn Museum Art
School from 1950-1953, studying with Max Beckmann, Ben Shahn, and Gabor Peterdi. He moved to
Kent, Washington in 1953, were he taught at the Burnley School for Professional Art and
Seattle University's Art Department. In 1959 Pierce was named Artist-in-Residence under a
Carnegie grant to establish the art department at the University of Alaska. He returned
briefly to Kent, Washington in 1963 before moving to Milwaukee in 1966 to an appointment of
Assistant Professor in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Pierce
retired as Professor Emeritus at UWM and returned to Kent, Washington in 1985.
Pierce founded the Red Door Studio in Kent, Washington in 1959 with his book Little No Name. The press moved to Shorewood, Wisconsin when
Pierce began work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and returned to Kent, Washington
in 1985 when he left his position in Milwaukee. The Red Door Studio has published many
titles including The Bear That Woke Too Soon (1964), Birds (1977), Cattle Drive '76
(1976), Sea Wrack (1981), Amish
Days (1994).
Danny Pierce has been exhibiting his artwork both in the United States and internationally
since 1946. He has won awards in painting and printmaking in juried exhibitions, which
include the Connecticut Academy for Fine Arts' Green Memorial Award for best oil landscape
and the first prize in oil painting given by the Southern Illinois Art Association. Pierce
has also participated in a variety of open art competitions, such as the 6th Annual Print
Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Northwest Printmakers International
Annual at the Seattle Art Museum, the University of Southern California Print Annual in Los
Angeles, and the American Color Print Society in Philadelphia. He has had a number of
one-man shows at galleries and museums, such as the Creative Gallery and the Contemporaries
Gallery in New York, the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington, the Bradley Galleries in
Milwaukee, the Universities of Maine and Alaska, and the Kohler Gallery in Seattle. Pierce's
work can be found in the permanent collections museums and libraries internationally, which
include the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, NY, the New York Public Library, the
National Museum of Sweden in Stockholm, the Bibliophial National in Paris, Princeton
University, and the Library of Congress, as well as many private collections.
