Artist Biography
Peter studied art at Croydon College of Art and Hampstead School of Art in London, and at West Dean College in Sussex, England. For many years he worked internationally as a film editor, on features, documentaries, and commercials. He now lives and works on the East End of Long Island, and paints full time.
One consequence of developing story-telling skills during his career in film is that many of his paintings are instilled with a narrative element. His works balance on the knife-edge between the external and interior environments; intensity of color and precise composition lead the observer to new insights into the familiar.
Peter's work is generally described as realist, but his paintings often contain elements of the surreal. By removing many incidental and unnecessary details from everyday settings the content is distilled into a pure, intense, and subliminally unsettling depiction.
His paintings have been exhibited in several galleries on the East End of Long Island, including the Quogue Gallery, East End Arts, the Southampton Cultural Center, and William Ris Gallery in Jamesport. He has had solo exhibitions at the Rosalie Dimon Gallery in Jamesport, the Remsenburg Academy, and the Peconic Landing Auditorium, which featured the series Palm Beach Stories, five large paintings set in the sub-topical environment of southern Florida.
This series draws on the artist’s long career in film and his love of movies. Each painting evokes a different movie genre. They visit the worlds of the crime thriller, science fiction, romance, disaster, and black comedy. While using these subjects as starting points, the stories within each painting can be re-interpreted as many times as there are viewers to observe them.
In 2018, Peter’s painting Abrasha in Port-au-Prince, was selected for an Award of Merit at the Long Island Biennial Exhibition, which is presented by the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY.
In April of 2019 Peter had a solo exhibition, curated by gallerist Peter Marcelle, at MM Fine Art gallery, in Southampton, NY. This exhibition premiered Peter’s large work The Art of Conflict (48 x 96” oil on canvas). It explores the relationships between human conflict and art. In 2023 this painting was selected for inclusion at the Ad Art Show, which was mounted at the Powerhouse Gallery in Brooklyn
Currently, Peter is working on the series Statues, five paintings which explore concepts of what it means to be human.
His paintings are in private collections in New York City, on Long Island, in Florida, New York, Rhode Island, Toronto Ontario, and London England.