Peter Perry

Address    
Stile Cottage, Trevithal,  
Paul, Penzance,
Cornwall TR19 6UQ       

m: 07759 660050 t: 01736 731846
e: peter@peterperry.com

Born         
Mousehole, Cornwall 1950

Education        
BSc University of Newcastle
MSc University of Sheffield
PhD University of Newcastle

Biography

I had an unconventional childhood in west Cornwall and rural north Wales as a member of a highly artistic family. My mother, Biddy Picard, was a well-known artist who painted and exhibited well into her 80s.

I showed artistic ability at a very young age, winning a regional art competition even whilst at primary school. I was very much an ‘outdoor kid’ and my friends and I seemed to spend half our lives in the countryside, along the foreshore or out at sea in small boats; I loved birds and would watch them for hours on end. My father was in forestry in North Wales and throughout childhood and as a young man I frequently visited the family in Snowdonia, where the Welsh mountain landscape and time spent with trees and woodlands made a deep, lasting impression on me.

I am self-taught in painting, having studied earth sciences to PhD level at university and then, as a mature student, forestry, rather than fine art. Much of my adult life has been spent working out-doors and probably because of this landscape and the natural environment are my main inspiration.

Currently I work mainly in oil, pastel and watercolour, doing lots of small outside studies, which include some of my best work. Large oils are developed either from the outside sketches or, in the case of semi/abstract paintings, are products of memory and my imagination. Both pastel and watercolour are not only convenient for working outdoors but also enable me to get the effects I want, subtlety with soft pastel and watercolour, bold bright colours with oil pastel. I use charcoal or graphite when I’m concerned with pattern and tone rather than colour.

My work varies enormously in scale and focus and whilst I enjoy making small highly detailed studies of nature – say a feather or a leaf, I also love to try to capture the huge sweep of a sky, a bare landscape or the essence of something I’ve seen with little or no detail and most of the emphasis on atmosphere. I travel a good deal and in recent years have painted not only in Cornwall but also in Scotland, Wales, Eire, northern France, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, California, Japan and Australia.

Over the years I’ve shown in a number of Cornish galleries, including recently Tremenheere, Gulval and Far and Wild, Perranporth. I’ve also shown quite widely elsewhere in the UK, including London and have been included in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition five times and shortlisted on a number of other occasions. In 2015 one of my landscapes was included in the RA’s own selection ‘Best of British’.