Fur Real: The Beasties Are Back—The Art of Maija Peeples-Bright

Fur Real: The Beasties Are Back, is a vibrant solo exhibition by celebrated California artist Maija Peeples-Bright, whose joyful, unconventional work is deeply rooted in Northern California. For more than five decades, her exuberant creatures, bold patterns, and irrepressible humor have enlivened the West Coast art scene.

Peeples-Bright’s career is closely tied to the artists, institutions, and movements that shaped Sacramento’s influential creative culture. At UC Davis, she studied with William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, and David Gilhooly, forming lasting friendships with each of them. She earned her master’s degree in art in 1965, the same year she made her exhibition debut at Folsom’s renowned Candy Store Gallery, an important center for the California Funk and Nut art movements, where she continued to exhibit for three decades.

This much-anticipated return to Blue Line Arts follows her beloved 2012 retrospective, Maija Peeples-Bright: World of Woof, and celebrates an artist whose work remains an important part of the region’s story in California art. Fur Real unleashes a fresh menagerie of Peeples-Bright’s iconic “beasties”—wide-eyed, pun-loving creatures that transform paintings, sculpture, furniture, and found objects into colorful worlds of humor and imagination.

Fur Real: The Beasties Are Back invites visitors to reconnect with curiosity, joy, and the delightfully unconventional spirit that continues to define Peeples-Bright’s work.