After years of appalling highschool grades, Peter’s mother (a successful artist in her own right) had the good sense and foresight to sign him up for weekly life drawing classes. Around the same time, a renegade group of art school lecturers caught up in a scandal after one of them stripped off in a theory class opened a new art school in Far North Queensland just 400 miles south of where Peter’s family were living at the time – Australia’s a big country.
Armed with his average grades and a portfolio of naked lady sketches, Peter enrolled at the art school and discovered soft pastels for the first time. He knew he was onto something when, in his final year, some of the lecturers asked to buy his paintings, and so began a creative journey that has seen him work as an illustrator, award winning advertising creative and pastel artist. Peter is obsessed with the vibrancy and immediacy of soft pastels. To quote that great Australian punk band, Amyl and the Sniffers, “Good energy and bad energy, I’ve got plenty of energy, it’s my currency”.
Peter currently resides in the New Zealand bush and a lot of his works are inspired by the weird and diverse range of native birds that live there.
Someone recently told me they thought my soft pastel paintings of Norwegian waterfalls looked a little dangerous. That they looked punk. I’m not sure they realised how right they were. The way I capture the energy of Manafossen, Odnesfossen, Kjelfossen and all of the other fossen is to lock myself in the studio and turn…
I’m standing at the front of a classroom and I’m terrified. Who knew a dozen mature-aged art students could be so intimidating.
If you can get one to be still long enough chooks make great subject matter. They’re self-contained vivid balls of colour and they have personalities. Chook eyes can convey a wide variety of emotions; fear, aggression, possibly even love.
Here’s a terrifying thought. Put away the reference photo, pick up a Unison Colour soft pastel and paint.
