California native Paige Peterson derives her colorful and whimsical imagery from the various forms and figures she encounters in daily life. From groups of gossiping teenage bathers, to stylized portraits of parrots, to vast, vacant seascapes, Peterson omits extraneous visual information to portray her subject at its purest form. Her work has been exhibited alongside that of William Wegman, Chuck Close, Alex Katz and Christo, and has been credited as “continuing and even updating a Pop-minimalist tradition that includes such practitioners as Will Barnet and Alex Katz”. Peterson’s favorite quote by Miles Davis both elucidates her choice of clean lines and simplified forms, and can easily be applied to the work of her predecessors: “It’s the notes I don’t play that make my music.”

A native of Belvedere Lagoon, located in Marin County across the bay from San Francisco, Peterson was exposed to elements of style, design, and composition from an early age by her mother, Corinne Wiley. A well-established interior designer, Wiley came to her eighteen-year-old daughter desperate for paintings to hang in a recently decorated and soon-to-be-open model home. Peterson enthusiastically obliged, eager to apply the lessons of her art classes, and created approximately twenty paintings. The paintings sold almost as quickly as they went up on the walls and it was the first of many of Peterson’s successes.

After a life-changing battle with an operable brain tumor, Peterson devoted herself almost exclusively to her artwork, pouring her courage, appreciation for life, and joy from her many meaningful relationships onto her canvases. In a recent series, she featured groups of people engaged in conversation positioned against stark, monochromatic backgrounds in order to accentuate their stylized forms and focus attention on their simple yet intimate interactions. Peterson says: “I am fascinated by things that are not being said, the awkwardness that often ensues when people really only want to be close to each other. What are they thinking and why? It’s like putting your ear to a seashell to hear the ocean. What you hear instead are your own thoughts and memories.”

During the year, Peterson divides her time between Manhattan and the house her grandmother built on Belvedere Lagoon. She also spends summers on East Hampton, continuing a long tradition of artists drawn to the tidal wetlands of Long Island. In addition to her artwork, Peterson has been a regular contributor to Lifetime Television’s Our Home, appeared on Oprah, and designed and styled segments for ABC’s Good Morning America. She recently added children’s book illustrator to her list of accomplishments, collaborating with two time Emmy and Grammy winner Chris Cerf on a book about a swayback horse named Blackie, the beloved mascot of Tiburon, California.

In 2003, Peterson was selected a member of the prestigious Guild Hall Academy of the Arts, where her work was included in a group show. She has exhibited on both the East and West coasts, at venues including McRae Hinckley, San Francisco; NTWH Gallery, Belfast, Maine; and Tiburon Fine Art Gallery, California.

KS


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