Lot 34

A sense of ephemerality hovers over Nicholas Bierk’s work. The moon will soon be covered by passing clouds; a candle will be blown out; a cat will jump; and the sun will set. Yet such transitionary moments are fused with stabilizing forces of patterns and rhythms that are rooted in nature, relationships, as well as in the act of painting. Bierk approaches them with reverence, depicted as a glowing spider in its minutely woven web, the vast repeated rippling of water, and the steady breath of someone sleeping.