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Adrienne Pierluissi is a Milwaukee-based painter and the owner of The Sugar Maple in Bay View. She describes her art as "currently abstract and borderline expressionism when they’re more relatively representational."

"I’m most inspired by incredible anxieties about human nature, and the lack of words to express them," says Pierluissi.

As an artist and a small business owner, Pierluissi's income is greatly compromised during the pandemic and she is working hard to sell her work online. She says these challenging times have definitely affected her work.

"My current work is very muddled, there’s so much going on, I want them to be more direct and simplified, but they’re confused, disorderly, somewhat violent," says Pierluissi.

Pierluissi received her BA in Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Illinois in 1990. She moved to Manhattan in 1992 and attended the Student’s Art League. In 1995, she moved to New Orleans and worked at the Contemporary Arts Center. She moved to Chicago in 1998 and then to Milwaukee in 2003, where she has lived ever since.

Although challenged, Pierluissi is hopeful and sees a ray of creative light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

"I’m really wanting to push into a new phase, and I know I will, I just have to work through this convoluted process," says Pierluissi.

Check out more of Adrienne Pierluissi's paintings here.