 Peter Perry
As a young child in west Cornwall I more or less ran wild. My friends and I seemed to spend half our lives in the fields and meadows, along the foreshore, or out at sea in our small ‘punts’. I loved birds and would watch them for hours. I come from a highly artistic family - my mother Biddy Picard is a well-known artist who still paints and exhibits at 84. I showed ability from an early age, winning a regional art prize even at primary school. I was also fairly academic and most of my tertiary education was in the earth sciences rather than in fine art. My father was in forestry in North Wales and throughout childhood and adolescence I regularly visited the family in Snowdonia. Both the wildness and grandeur of the Welsh mountain landscape and time spent involved with trees and woodlands made a deep, lasting impact on me. A good deal of my adult life has been spent working outdoors and probably because of this, the natural environment provides most of my inspiration. At present much of my work is landscape and I particularly enjoy quickly- changing subjects such as the sky, and water. My work varies enormously in scale and focus, and whilst I enjoy small, intimate glimpses of nature, I also love to try to capture the huge sweep of a landscape or sky with little or no detail. I work mainly in oils or pastel, often using the latter for small studies, some of which are later developed as large paintings. I usually take pastels if I’m travelling because they’re ideal for quick sketches. Such sketches include some of my best work, often having a spontaneity and feel that’s very difficult to scale up. I also love the subtle atmospheric effects you can get with pastels. Much of my recent work is of France, particularly Normandy, which I visit frequently. |