The abstract nature of art is here shown in the landscape paintings of Peter Walker. Here you can see a collection of spaces and places that the artist has viewed and reinterpreted. These paintings show still landscapes that come to life; they are seen to have movement and form. We see the environment through a sculptor’s eyes, abstracted to the shapes and forms necessary for expression.
“The world around us can often become so familiar that we forget to see it. In some instances the artist’s role is to perfectly replicate that landscape, however it is not the aim of this collection of landscapes to create photographic representations. My approach is more akin to set a hypothesis and create painting which answers a specific set of questions. Artistically this can be quite complicated as it involves interpreting the scene before you, your material, and such things as an emotion, a feeling or a presence you want to apply to the artwork. This cannot be achieved by creating a realistic image. For example the impressionist Monet created a landscape of poppies often regarded as one of the most popular paintings in the world, however after the first world war the poppy became associated with the fields of northern France and military conflict and therefore the association is now different, and viewing the painting today is different in light of historic events. The same is true of much of the world around us. Therefore the artist, through asking different questions about the subject, is offering contemporary responses to the subject i.e. landscape.” PETER WALKER
