About the artist:

Born in Chipstead, Surrey, on the 6th April 1948. He left school the day after his 15th birthday to study Graphic Design at Reigate School of Art. Peter, ever the individualist, left without his diploma, having upset his tutors by going on holiday before the final term had finished. This didn’t prevent him from being hired almost straight away by a large London advertising agency, as a Junior Art Director, before going on to work as a graphic designer at two leading design groups, in the Scott/Jaffe and Talmadge, Drummond & Partners. Peter had at first toyed with the idea of immigrating to Canada, but decided on Australia in 1969, and worked as Art Director for what was considered its best agency at the time, Connaghan & May in Sydney, and consequently as a freelance designer. He had attended a series of lectures at Sydney University given by Robert Hughes, a precursor to the book "The Shock of the New". The sheer charisma of Hughes rekindled within Peter's spirit an intense interest in the fine arts; listening to Hughes, feeling the desire and passion for art would change the course of his life. Peter decided to leave everything behind and traveled throughout South East Asia, and after working for Batty advertising in Singapore for a while, he ended up living on a Greek island where another chance meeting would further lead him towards painting. The American artist Douglas James Johnson offered Peter a house in the village of Forcalquier in the south of France for as long as he wished, and this was the start of finally doing what he realized he loved most: Fine Art. It was there in the solitude of the beautiful surroundings, in a 12th century house that Peter began drawing, using the village and the surrounding area as inspiration to create the works for his first exhibition at the Robin Gibson Gallery in Sydney in October 1979, followed by a Paris show the following March at Krief-Raymond, a new and progressive gallery where on first view, his intricate and delicate drawings labeled as "pencil paintings" looked out of place. Galleria Forni in Italy then gave Peter access to exhibitions all over the world. Before moving to Paris, he went to study painting with Ricardo Tommasi Ferroni in Rome. Over the years, Peter has gradually adapted and modified his initial classical training, bringing to light his unique style; a natural feel and eye for the relationship of an object to it surroundings, the light and the shadow, what the Japanese call "Chabana". As always, full of curiosity and the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and wisdom, Peter has continued to travel all over the world on a regular basis, visiting countless countries and peoples, and now divides his time between France, Australia, and America. - From petersorrell.net written by Maria Iida Perry