Art: Peter Stevens
Lives: Chatswood, Sydney
Age: 59
'Coastal' by Peter Stevens, 2017, oil on board, 123cm x 112cm.
Photo: Peter StevensRepresented by: Australian Galleries, Sydney and Melbourne
His thing. Oil paintings: landscapes and still life, semi-abstract and faux naïf.
Our take. Peter Stevens has been around for a long time, rarely achieving the recognition his work deserves. He's appeared regularly (too regularly!) in S.H. Ervin's annual Salon des Refusés, with landscape paintings that were rejected for the Art Gallery of NSW's Wynne Prize. Stevens studied at Sydney College of the Arts from the late 1970s, completing a postgraduate diploma in print-making at the same school in 1983. He held his first solo show in 1986 but has gone for periods of seven to 10 years without exhibiting, which helps explain his relatively low profile.
What's his style? It defies illusionism. Brushstrokes remain visible, forms are simplified into loose, ragged planes with no hint of recessive space. A typical landscape looks like a patchwork, not a view that leads the eye to a distant horizon.
Who are his influences? They're easy to discern. He obviously admires Ken Whisson and the Indigenous painter Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, even borrowing the sea eagle that was one of Riley's signature motifs; the eagle makes a prominent appearance in Coastal (pictured), arguably the most inventive picture in his first show with Australian Galleries. And in a series of paintings of fish on a plate in front of an open window, Stevens draws on modernist motifs familiar from artists such as Braque and Matisse. Yet he's concerned to emphasise the local origins of his paintings in his brief artist's statement. "The Australian coastal landscape has woven itself into my being from an early age. Estuaries, rivers and the sea. Sea eagles soaring updrafts on headlands. Night fishing. Sharks and southerlies. Weatherboards and fibro. Banksias, pines and eucalyptus. The din of cicadas. Storm swells and whitecaps."
Can I afford it? These works are very accessibly priced for an established artist. The smallest paintings in the show, at 40cm by 40cm, go for $2000. The top price is $13,000 for the largest paintings, Coast (123cm by 183cm) and Ocean (121cm by 180cm). The record for one of Stevens's works is $18,000, for a recent commission.
Where can I have a squiz? Australian Galleries in Sydney; 15 Roylston Street, Paddington, from March 13 to April 8.
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