JUNE 2 - 28, 2026
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, JUNE 6TH, 1PM
Peter was born in Germany to Estonian parents which explains his unusual name. At the age of four he moved to Australia with his family where they lived for 10 years, 6 of which were in the remote outback of West Australia. This is when he developed a keen interest in drawing.
Moving to Canada in 1960, Peter took art throughout high school as well at the University of Toronto where he studied Architecture for three years. After a 25-year hiatus from art while focussing on building a business career and raising a family, he moved from Ontario to Vancouver. For almost 9 years he and his wife Lorraine lived aboard their 45-ft ketch moored at Granville Island in Vancouver, cruising the scenic BC and Washington coastlines on weekends and vacations. During this time he returned to pencil drawings, some of which were sold for magazine covers, and in 2004 began painting in acrylics, now his medium of choice.
In 2007 he was accepted as an Active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, and for 5 years he served on the Board of Directors for that organization before moving to Vancouver Island where he paints in his boathouse studio in Nanoose Bay to the sound of breaking waves under the window. At this point in his painting career Peter will be limiting his work to commission assignments.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I paint in a realism style and I’m convinced my preference for realism stems from my life-changing experience in Grade 11 when a girl sharing my desk in science class loaned me her glasses as almost a joke because I was having difficulty reading the teacher’s notes on the blackboard. I almost fell to the floor as I never realized it was possible to see so clearly. I immediately got myself prescription glasses. Suddenly I could see individual leaves on the trees and recognize classmates that walked by on the street, and even though I’ve now lost some peripheral vision from glaucoma, every day when I open my eyes is a celebration of the wonders of clear vision.
We live in such a visually spectacular part of the world so I tend to paint what I see and how I see it. However, virtually every painting is a combination of various parts that I assemble from various sources, and some of the subject matter simply comes from my memory and imagination.
This show is called “Birds Eye View” because it just happened that the majority of these paintings contain birds somewhere. I do not consider myself a wildlife artist specifically, but it just happens that so much of what I see every day includes birds, deer, or sometimes even whales and Orcas, so I include them in my images.