Ronna Schulkin Pearce (photo) was born in Los Angeles, went to Hollywood High School, and received her bachelors degree in fine art from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She lived in San Francisco and Berkeley during the turbulent years of the counter culture movement. She worked in the fasion industry for many years. She has traveled extensively throughout the world, and she lived in Zimbabwe for a year. Since 1987 she has lived in Santa Cruz with her husband and two children.

Her artistic influences include David Parks, Manuel Neri, and Paul Klee, but also include the architecture, fields, murals, and pottery of Southern California remembered from her childhood. Her work is abstract, but not without figuration. It is populated with everyday objects such as fruit, vessels, and clothing.

Her paintings are acrylic on canvas, some combined with dry elements such as collage and graphic materials. She considers both academic elements and substantive parts of a painting. When a painting manages to reconcile these internal forces, an organic quality emerges that releases the same quality in the room it hangs in and in the people who pass by it. In The Timeless Way of Building, the architect Christopher Alexander locates this same quality in abandoned farm houses, hidden gardens, and everyday objects. He tries to characterize this quality using words like whole, alive, organic, authentic, and eternal, but in the end he declares all of these terms to be inadequate and simply calls it the quality without a name.

Ronna was named Best Foreign Artist by the National Gallery the year she lived in Zimbabwe, and she was selected as the Best Emerging Artist in a UCSC Alumni Show. Her corporate sales include The Santa Clara Hilton, Seascape, Convivio's, and Dominican Hospital.

She sells most of her work directly from her studio and through interior designers. She sells approximately 20 - 30 pieces per year including individual and corporate sales. Her paintings range is size from small pieces (18" x 18") to larger works (48" x 60") appropriate for corporate sites. Currently, her prices range from $500 to $5700.