From an early age, Pamela Peterson DeLay loved being outdoors – outside playing in a nearby forest and later camping and hiking throughout the Midwest. She also loved drawing from the time she could hold a crayon. Her parents encouraged that love of art, and she received her BFA from the University of Cincinnati. After graduation, she found employment as a commercial artist for the major evening newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. This position taught her to draw constantly, quickly, and accurately.
To broaden her skills, she took classes in printmaking, color, and painting at the Columbus College of Art and Design. At the same time, she continued to produce work that reflected her search for inner meaning. This art was primarily watercolor figurative work, which explored the human form’s relationship in space and time. This series incorporated additional experimental works in lithography and etching.
A move into an old farmhouse away from the city sparked a new direction in her art based on the rural environment surrounding her. Later moves throughout Ohio inspired further focus on the landscape and her response to an integration of self, sky and land. Further education yielded an MS in communications.
She was represented by several galleries throughout Ohio and San Francisco, and exhibited in the Ohio governor’s office for three years. She also achieved recognition at local, regional and Ohio statewide juried art exhibitions but her focus was always on the art process itself. She considers her art as always evolving, and is happiest during the actual creation process.
Recently, a move to Sedona inspired her to explore a new way of interpreting her environment. “By addressing my own human role as a member of society through my art, I am forced to pay attention to my footprint on this living soil, to speak my own truth, and to visually emphasize the fragile beauty of clear skies and water.”
In the past four years, she has won awards at Sedona, regional, state and national exhibitions. She also has had work juried into the New Mexico National Pastel Association exhibition in Santa Fe in 2018; at the Phippen Museum in Prescott, Arizona in April of 2022 and 2023 and at the Millicent Rogers Museum International Pastel show in Taos in September, 2022, and the Colorado National pastel show in 2023. Her work is in both private and corporate collections throughout the United States.
