“Painting is a poem without words”
Horace

I was first given a go with oil paints as a child in the 60s and have used them ever since. I think it was Ruskin who said that mountains were the beginning and the end of landscape. They certainly got me going! The coasts of Britain and Ireland, music and the theatre also get me going, as does the magic and nostalgia of steam railways, a painting genre I have tried more recently. I find the Buttermere, Crummock and Loweswater valleys in the English Lake District very attractive and I like to cycle out to paint en plein air whenever possible. I call the results “oil sketches”. My ideal is to produce, in about 3 hours, a good, lively-looking painting which can be hung, still wet, as soon as I get it home.

The plein air sketches are higher priced, the fortunate result of a coincidence of opportunity, fair weather and my developing skill. Perhaps it’s true to say that they cannot be repeated. The lower-priced paintings were made in the comfort of the studio, but prices may also reflect the length of time taken with some subjects.

“But you know all pictures painted inside the studio will never be as good as the things done outside.” Paul Cezanne

Also in recent years, I have made paintings of subjects as diverse as red squirrels, puffins, angels, a shipwreck, the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and seascapes in Ireland and the Scottish Isles.

“A painter’s taste must grow out of what obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what is suitable for him to do in art.”
Lucian Freud

Oil paintings by Painter Pete by Peter Brook

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