About the Artist

It’s with great sadness to inform visitors that Peter passed away on the 12th March 2022. Any contacts will be redirected to his family while we consider how best to manage his artistic legacy.

Peter was born in London and trained at Walthamstow School of Art for five years and as he says, “not realising at the time that he was attending one of the best in the country”.

He has exhibited in several London galleries including The Royal Academy and exhibits frequently in East Anglian galleries. In Germany he has a strong following of private collectors of his woodcuts.

His printmaking and painting currently run alongside each other and he is influenced by the German Expressionists, especially Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter groups.

Printmaking

With printmaking I prefer woodcuts as it gives me the opportunity to create strong images and I like to explore the grains of wood and to push the boundaries of woodcut printmaking. I like the feeling that from a dead piece of wood a new life is made by creating an image out of it.

Portraits

With portraits, I prefer to work in oils and to keep the painting fresh, not overworked. For me a portrait goes beyond just copying a person, I like to bring out the character, the ‘essence’ of the sitter.

Painting

I have found over a period of time when painting that the first stages had been nearer to what I wanted to achieve, which is of course a moving target.

These recent paintings are the result of spending a lot of time analysing the image which gave me the urge to paint the subject in the first place. The result is capturing the essence, the feeling, the layout, the colours, balance and design and leaving everything out that would confuse this. Therefore, more time looking than painting and avoiding overworking a painting, which then loses these qualities. They have taken longer than a more detailed photographic style, as it is harder to abstract and to keep only the important elements.