Ida Pearle grew up in a loft on West 26th street in New York City in a family of tinkerers. Her mother Gretchen was a painter and her father, a sound recordist for motion picture films. Her father had an in home recording studio;  Ida would come home after school every day to find a new and interesting character being recorded in her home! Sometimes there were opera singers, like Beverly Sills, or folk artists, like David Amram or Richie Havens. Sometimes it was hard to focus on her homework!  Ida's mother had a huge art studio inside their loft, and Ida spent a lot of time drawing, and practicing violin. It was a space filled with many creative activities, and lots of love. 

Ida’s bedroom window overlooked a huge flea market, and she would spend weekends rummaging through objects from another time, like antiques, old scarves and spare parts of things. If she was lucky, she might find a sparkly glass bead, or swatch of colorful fabric to bring home with her. Once she saw Andy Warhol there.

As a child, her favorite places to visit were the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the underwater dioramas at the Museum of Natural History, and Children’s Zoo in Central Park. 

On friday evenings in the summer, Ida, and her mother and sister would wait downstairs for her father to pick them up in their “little green car.” They would drive upstate and the Moon would follow them all the way to Addy’s House, where she could hear the crickets chirping loudly and see the stars that the city’s lights had masked.

When Ida grew up she studied figurative painting at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1998, she began making cut paper collages with a focus on children. Though seemingly simple, her collages are closely observed studies in gesture and movement and based on a thorough knowledge of the figure. There is a quiet depth to Ida’s work; elements of abstraction are balanced by a pictorial specificity that evoke strong emotions from viewers.

Ida’s first children’s book A Child’s Day; An Alphabet of Play (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) received a glowing review in The New York Times, and was chosen as a best children’s book of 2008 by Bank Street College. The Moon is Going to Addy's House has garnered many started reviews, and kind words from the likes of Brian Selznick, and Martin Scorsese. (noted here) 

Ida has played violin on about 50 records with artists such The Magnetic Fields, Low, Elizabeth Mitchell, Ted Leo, The 6ths, Tara Jane Oneil, His Name is Alive,  William Parker, Ida, and many more. She has toured the United States extensively, and has had the honor of playing at Alice Tully Hall with William Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, and many of the city's music and performance venues, such as The Knitting Factory, Symphony Space, Bowery Ballroom etc. 

Ida has taught art classes at The Spence School, and teaches students privately at her home and studio in Brooklyn. 

Ida lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughter, and still likes to drive to the Addy's House every summer, with her family.  

She is represented by Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at De Fiore & Co.