Maija Peeples-Bright was well into completing her math degree at UC Davis in 1963 when her counselor advised her to take an art class to fulfill general education requirements. On her first day in the class, she unknowingly stepped right into the middle of what's known today as the California Funk movement. Eventually she ended up palling around with such notables as Robert Arneson, William T. Wiley, Peter VandenBerge, David Gilhooly and Roy DeForest. "I was so lucky that Davis was just this hotbed of art at the time that I was there," says Peeples-Bright, who later became known for her Rainbow House in San Francisco—a house painted every color under the sun, where many of her art colleagues gathered to discuss art and life in the late '60s and early '70s. "I find that art drives my life," she says. "I do art in just about everything—my shirts, crochet my blankets. I have the very good fortune to have had people like Arneson around."
    Maija was born in Riga, Latvia in 1942.  Maija and her parents then moved to Northern California eight years later.  Originally she planned a career in mathematics but in her third year at the University of California at Davis she created paintings, prints and ceramic sculptures of  zany lovable animals and bright flowers.

Maija studied under Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson to gain her Master's in only one year at the University of  Davis.  Maija prefers to isolate herself from the art world and work in her garage studio in Eldorado Hills, California.

    In 1967, Maija lived in San Francisco in a house she helped paint every color that Dutch Boy produced and called her work "The Rainbow House."  Maija would write to children in alphabet stick letters and they would send her their cherished drawings. Even the titles of her work  
make you smile.  Her work is in many private collections and in permanent Museum collections listed below.

 

Permanent Museum Collections

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

La Jolla Museum, La Jolla, California

University of Saskatchewan Museum, Regine, Canada

Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio

Matthews Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona

Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada

 

Private Collections

New York City, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Berkeley, California, Nashville, Tennessee, Canada and many other locations, especially in California.


Clients include actor, Vincent Price and the owner of Tower Records.

 

Public Collections 
California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Ohio, Indiana, Canada,  England, Japan and Brazil.