Join us Nov. 9 to celebrate the new collection of works from Peter Pettegrew & local artist Mike Perry.

Peter Pettegrew has devoted his life to capturing the timeless beauty of the natural landscape on canvas. As a youth, his world was centered in Monterey Bay, California, and it was here that his compelling encounters with the ocean inspired sketches. As early as four years of age, his aunt, who was a painter, recognized his talent and insisted to his mother that he only be given blank paper; no coloring books. Childhood sketches symbolized the sights and sensations of ocean landscapes, and soon more serious efforts resulted as he turned to painting. By ten years of age, the artist was already studying with one of the older marine painters in the Bay Area. His formal art education began when he applied and qualified for admission to Harbor Senior High in Santa Cruz, California, a prestigious and progressive school dedicated to advancing the development of artistic skills and creative freedom. After moving to Florida, Pettegrew went on to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, where he studied painting as well as graphic art techniques that he now employs in his work with hand-pulled serigraphs, stone lithographs, and originals. After his formal education, he furthered his schooling in individual mediums through private artist workshops, including oil painting, watercolor techniques and charcoal drawing. Finding his inspiration through detailed research of the Master Impressionists and plein air painters of the 19th Century, this work revealed the undeniable course for his life, “to honor the face of nature by painting her portrait in so many ways and in so many places.” His captivating impressionistic style, using delicate tones, subtle luminous lighting, and savory blends of color, has resulted in distinctive paintings for his collectors. From childhood, the landscapes have always been the beloved subject for Pettegrew’s passionate creations. A naturalist, and outdoorsman, he camps, hikes, and explores, to find his timeless compositions. It is this focus, this need to completely lose himself in the wilderness in order to paint, breathing in the air of dawn and dusk, that nurtures the inspiration he pours onto his canvases.

Michael Andrew Perry b. 1970 Dallas, Texas.
BFA University of North Texas 1998.

Growing up in the piney woods of East Texas, the southern landscape has always resonated with my southern Celtic DNA. I seek to cultivate landscapes that evoke an atmospheric narrative of dreamlike timeworn nostalgia through a mise en scene of thin translucent acrylic washes. By sharp contrast I grew up near the internationally renowned museums of the Dallas Forth Worth metroplex, where I was exposed to the 20th century modernism and sublime mark making of the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and Vernon Fisher, who was my instructor for two semesters at North Texas. My abstract work is simply an exploration of ethereal shape and form, where again, tranquility is my non pretentious goal.