Matthew Peake
Artist Statement for Overlooks:
“After discovering how fascinating it was to look down upon people going about their activities, and watching, like in a kaleidoscope, how patterns form and reform, I began to arrange the human figure in abstract ways—by gestural shape on a geometric background. Each piece was created by continually turning the paper or canvas, such that no single orientation was favored. And, although no narrative was intended, the finished painting, in its many possible positions, often suggested its own unique stories to the viewer.”
Work
Featured Work
Matthew Peake
Overlook #30: Duets
$2800.00
Matthew Peake
Overlook #19: Shadow Play
$2400.00
Matthew Peake
Overlook #18: Like It
$2400.00
Matthew Peake
Overlook #7: Honored in the Breach
$2200.00
Matthew Peake
Overlook #35: Is that It?
$2800.00
Matthew Peake
Overlook #3: To or Fro
$2400.00
Biography:
I began my professional career in 1982 as a family physician in rural Vermont. After 24 years, I left my practice of medicine to pursue a full-time career in the visual arts. Initially, my paintings were realistic renderings of the figure with fruit, but my fascination with movement led me to painting the figure from aerial perspectives (The Overlooks) and to the composing and displaying of some of my works on a rotational frame (The RoFrame®).
Perspective in rendering the human figure continued to be an interest of mine, whether linear, aerial, or with views from below, which led to the sculptural photography pieces making up the series Outside The Box.
More recently, I have entered into the realm of abstraction, with collages and assemblages, the latest being Time Pieces, compositions made from tree products like corks and paper with a cycle of lights illuminating them, showing time as a still, and as a continuously repeating pattern of light and shadow.
Finally, using chards of pastel and clear gesso, I began by abstracting still lives but have gone on to create wholly abstract pieces in a new way of pastel painting.