Cairns intermediate diptych no.2, 2010 Acrylic, oil and wax on paper laid on linen two panels 95 x 52cm
£3,000
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Peter H. Begley has always painted in series, exploring for months and
sometimes years a subject that offers rich possibilities. In the past
he has drawn inspiration from the frescoes at Pompei, Tibetan tiger
rugs, and the heads of commuters in New York City subways. At his last
Oundle exhibition at The Dolby Gallery, in 2002, he showed a series
called “Laundry Lines,” an idea that came to him while he was living
in Rome. He translated the daily sight of brightly coloured washing
hung out to dry above the city streets; in his paintings, the laundry
became a teasing, semi-abstract message about private, domestic life
and public display—a message sent by semaphore.
Begley’s new series, “Cairns,” was inspired by his four year old son’s
apparently perilous yet, in the end, stable constructions. The
paintings explore the tension between the actual and the possible that
has been always been at the heart of his work. They teeter on the
divide between the abstract and the figurative—a vibrant suspension
between two realms, a place where the imagination is a force as
powerful as gravity. They call to mind the entire sweep of our lives,
from children’s building blocks to burial mounds, evoked in a style
that can be traced back to cave painting and forward again to
conceptual art.
Central to Begley’s work is his use of colour—rich, vibrant reds,
blues, and greens—and a texture that imparts an uncanny sense of
volume, so that the shapes emerge in all their potent being. He has
been using the same materials and method for the last twenty years:
Working on paper, he first coats the surface with acrylic binder mixed
(not too finely) with plaster and pigment, so as to create a rough,
scored and bumpy surface; on this base, he creates his forms with an
oil crayon, over which he then rubs a layer of oil paint, followed by
a final patina of wax.
Peter Begley was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1958. He was
educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, the University of Virginia and
the New York Studio School. His work is to be found in public and
private collections in Europe and the United States, and has been
exhibited in eighteen one-man shows over the last twenty-five years in
galleries in New York, Washington, Rome, Cologne, and Grenoble. After
many years living in Rome, he now lives in Paris with his wife and two
children.
IIlustrated below are a selection of some of the other works to be shown in the exhibition
