CHRIS PETERS

www.chrispeters.com

Chris Peters lives and paints in Los Angeles, California. He teaches Perspective Drawing Practicum at the Gage Academy of Art during the Fall quarter.

He was born in 1958 and raised on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Pursuing his lifelong interest in art, he began painting in earnest eighteen years ago. He trained for three years at the Gage Academy of Art, completing their Drawing/Painting certificate program that emphasizes classical painting techniques.

Mr. Peters work has been exhibited in numerous juried shows in the Seattle area, most notably the PONCHO Invitational and two separate appearances at the Pacific Northwest Annual held at the Bellevue Art Museum.

Mr. Peters holds both a Bachelors and Masters degree from the University of Washington.

Work

The Germans have a word "unheimlich" that is difficult to translate into English, although a blur between the words "uncanny" and "eerie" perhaps comes the closest to providing a definition. That is the mood I am trying to invoke with my latest series of paintings.

In each of these paintings, I am trying to depict that uneasy twilight place between life and death, between reality and unreality, between self and what writer H.P. Lovecraft called "the others". I am trying to create tension between the quiet objects present in the still life and the disquieting sense that something is really quite wrong.

The techniques of classical realism are particularly useful to me. The limited palette and tenebrist lighting helps invoke a moody quality, removing the paintings from any particular time or place. The objects in my paintings draw from the classic symbolism of Vanitas still life and Catholic religious paintings; all refer to the cycle of life, death, and the promise of resurrection.

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