Peter Jacob Christ
“Peter’s paintings convey his cheerful sense of humor and love of color through the representation of old street signage and everyday objects. Not only is his draftsmanship exquisite, but his sense of composition consistently creates for interesting and compelling pieces that reflect the wit and intellect of the artist. Peter is a prolific painter whose work, though representational, portrays an uncanny and curious abstract quality that insists that the viewer pause and reconsider what in fact it is that the painting represents.“
- Kathy Wright, Sculptor
ARTIST STATEMENT
Driving, Discovering, Drawing and Painting
I like to get in the car and just drive to unknown places via less traveled routes. I’m always on the lookout to discover subject matter and landscapes that grab me. What frequently draws my eye are the sometimes faded but bold signs and street scenes that pop up just around the bend in the road. My wife and I are always on the lookout. Friends and family send bits they’ve spotted too. I feel like people usually see signs without really seeing them. They take in the information on the signs without looking at the signs as a part of (perhaps even the dominant part of) our modern landscapes.
Sometimes my paintings are focused on a single sign and it’s setting - the way light plays across the neon, the colors in the shadows it casts, the flaking paint, the chains that suspend it from the crumbling brick work.
Other times my paintings are a mashup of many different elements I’ve collected from these road trips. Signs, symbols, words, people, birds, clouds, textures and colors etc.
What interests me at first is the immediate impression of the subject in its setting, but what keeps me interested are the visual variations that exist when all the different elements of the image are viewed like music notes that are in confict with or in support of each other. These elements that interest me are elegant lines, shapes with strong positive and negative spaces, and colors that are sometimes bold, sometimes subtle. Weathered surfaces, rusted metal, and broken typography are sources for suggesting texture variations.
I feel like I listen with my eyes. Whether it’s a sign, a landscape, a person or whatever the subject may be - If I quietly listen I hear the structural beauty that was there when the subject was young and enhanced it aged; sharing it’s life experiences through what my eyes can hear. Broken is so often more interesting than pristine. And as a painting develops I’m no longer listening to the reference material, I’m listening to what I hear from the painting itself. The painting will tell me what to do. Of course.
In general my approach is to prep a piece with thumbnail sketches, based on bits and pieces of my photographs, and then create multiple layers with variations in Photoshop. This leads to an under drawing on canvas - usually in charcoal - following this things continue to evolve, where I’m often rearranging, deleting or adding new elements into the final puzzle as my painting progresses. Always aware that I want my paintings to work at a distance, in the middle ground, and in close-up.
I don’t think of my paintings as photorealistic but “representationally abstract”. Even a painting that looks realistic has been changed by me to express how I want to depict a scene rather than how the scene actually looked. Simultaneously, I’d like people to look at my paintings as a composition of abstract elements just like “notes’ are in music… and not just as a representation of recognizable objects. Realizing that they also “represent” the culture I’ve lived, in which can feel nostalgic and suggest remembrances.
Ironically, I often find the signs and scenes I’ve used as the basis for my paintings have been destroyed shortly after I've completed the paintings. Either by development or by accident. Perhaps I’m a curse.
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Peter Jacob Christ attended Syracuse University (BFA), studied painting at the Sir John Cass School of Art in London, and traveled through Europe before moving to New York. He earned a master’s degree from New York University (MA). Teachers that inspired him include the figurative painter Jerome Witkin and the pop artist Idelle Weber. Peter lives and works in New Hartford, CT.
Peter is represented by Alofft Gallery in Litchfield, CT