Helen Frankenthaler was a major influence on Pierce when she lived in the USA in the early 1970s. She lived, and painted, through 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland before, at the age of 55, she found her Guru, Sri Vasudeva, in India. In September 2013 she was based in the Leighton Colony at the Banff Centre in Canada preparing a body of work for an exhibition celebrating Yeats and Tagore, the great poets of Ireland and India.