D. Pierce Giltner is an outsider artist, with no formal training in art. With his raw talent, folk artist Giltner has created southern art using a variety of mediums. His early works from 2001-2017 were painted on salvaged wood and tin from derelict tenant houses around the small southern town, Chester, S.C., where he grew up. He reclaimed wood, roofing tin, and old house paint, to use as his art career began.
In the early part of his career, displaying in shows and festivals in the Southeast, his first collection depicted the hard life of black tenant farmers working in the South in the 1900’s. With this body of art titled “The Life of a Tennant Farmer” two paintings won best of show, and another painting remains in a permanent collection in a Folk Art Museum in Florida.
Around 2007, Giltner moved to the Lowcountry in Bluffton, S.C, and opened the “Gallery without Walls” an open air art gallery and studio. Here he began his second subject and body of art, “The Oysterman of the Lowcountry”. This subject, on wood and tin, showed a 3rd generation oysterman at work. In 2009, he released the body of art in several solo shows, Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston, and the Telfair Artfair in Savannah.
Since then, he has added canvas and art board to his repertoire.
In January 2019, inspired by a commission, he revisited the subject using canvas and oils. Here, he profoundly depicts the hard life of an oysterman. Each painting is based on the hardship of the oysterman on a cold winter’s day, as the sun beams down on razor sharp oyster beds while he painstakingly harvests the world’s finest oyster from the pristine May River.
Giltner now resides in his atelier, in Bluffton, S.C.
