Pete the Street sounds a great character. Love the stories about painting the people who were considering moving him on, and the triangle of dots showing where to paint.
Here's the press release:
Pete the Street captures the heart of London at Messum’s
Vivid scenes of the capital come together as a whole for the first time in January show by ‘Virtuoso painter’
Next time you cross Waterloo Bridge, look down at the pavement. If you can see three yellow dots set out in a triangular shape, you are looking at the mark of Pete the Street.
He’s not a graffiti artist, and this is not his ‘tag’; but Peter Brown (his real name) is an artist and the yellow dots are the markers for his easel, so that he can return to the exact spot he previously set up to paint.
The streets of London – north, south, east and west – are literally dotted with his easel marks. The result is not only dozens of remarkable paintings depicting the light, shade, tone, weather and mood of the capital, but a new coffee table book, London, Paintings by Peter Brown. Its more than 200 reproductions of paintings give as good a guided tour as any of the famous landmarks and local high streets that cohere to make the greatest city in the world.
And almost all of them were painted, come rain, shine or snow, en plein air, with rainwater often dripping down the canvas.
Now Pete the Street – a moniker he picked up from his insistence on working on the spot so that he can soak up the atmosphere of his surroundings – is the subject of a one-man show at Messum’s in Cork Street, Mayfair, from January 13 to February 12, launching the new year by cramming the whole of the Great Wen into a few square metres of wall space.
Brown, an art student turned satellite dish engineer, gave up the safety of the day job to paint full time around 20 years ago.
Previous books and collections of paintings have focused on his home city of Bath and his travels in India. Each is accompanied by a fascinating commentary of what happened around him as he painted.
These led up to the much larger London book, reflecting his obsession with the city that he visits four times every week, travelling up from the West Country on a daily basis in his nine-seater VW van.
It is no coincidence that Pete the Street has ended up showing at Messum’s. His impressionistic work, inspired by the likes of Walter Sickert and Ruskin Spear, follows the gallery’s dedication to what it recognised as an individual artistic movement that it controversially dubbed British Impressionism.
Perhaps that is also why in 2006 Brown found himself painting from the window of Room 508 – where Monet had worked a century before – as the hotel’s first artist-in-residence.
David Messum, who describes Brown as a ‘virtuoso painter who echoes the talent of the old masters’, sensed ‘something great in the making’ when he bumped into the artist on a traffic island in the middle of Piccadilly.
It was just one of the many extraordinary encounters Brown relates when talking about his life, many of which appear in his new book.
While painting Hammersmith Bridge, for instance, having returned to his van to renew his parking ticket, he came back to find a ‘wild, hairy man in a leather jacket’ painting a horse on his easel.
On St George’s Day by London Bridge, a fanfare heralded the approach of six men dressed in chain mail, draped in the colours of St George, blowing trumpets as they made their way along the towpath.
On another occasion, while painting in Eagle Place, he was approached by a beautifully dressed man who started dancing for him in the street. “He had just bought a grand piano for his 87th birthday and talked to me about working in the secret service. Meeting people like is that is a real treat.”
Less happy, initially, was a run-in with local council officials who tried to move him on in Piccadilly. While trying and failing to get through to their bosses on the phone, he used them as models for his picture. They liked the results and so left him to it.
As one of the most successful members of the New English Art Club working today, Pete the Street enjoys the “huge nostalgia involved in it”.
“Our greatest English painter is Constable or Freud, but I have a huge affinity for Walter Sickert, because of those impressionist roots. A lot of the members now are descendants of famous painters of the past, which I find fascinating.”
As well as Sickert, he admires Constable’s oil sketches, Richard Parkes Bonington and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, as well as Alfred Sisley.
“I also have a passion for Ruskin Spear’s domestic scenes and graphic lines. And we just stand back in awe at Freud.”
Now you can stand back in awe as Pete the Street’s London panoramas and street scenes hang together for the first time at Messum’s. It’s an experience he is looking forward to as well.
“I want to see how it hangs together because I really did paint the collection with the show in mind and this is the first chance to see if it will work.”
Peter Brown at Messum’s starts on January 13 and runs until February 12.
www.messums.com
(Shepherd Market)
Evening, Shepherd Market, 2015, oil on board, 16 x 12 inches.
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Here's the press release:
Pete the Street captures the heart of London at Messum’s
Vivid scenes of the capital come together as a whole for the first time in January show by ‘Virtuoso painter’
Next time you cross Waterloo Bridge, look down at the pavement. If you can see three yellow dots set out in a triangular shape, you are looking at the mark of Pete the Street.
He’s not a graffiti artist, and this is not his ‘tag’; but Peter Brown (his real name) is an artist and the yellow dots are the markers for his easel, so that he can return to the exact spot he previously set up to paint.
The streets of London – north, south, east and west – are literally dotted with his easel marks. The result is not only dozens of remarkable paintings depicting the light, shade, tone, weather and mood of the capital, but a new coffee table book, London, Paintings by Peter Brown. Its more than 200 reproductions of paintings give as good a guided tour as any of the famous landmarks and local high streets that cohere to make the greatest city in the world.
And almost all of them were painted, come rain, shine or snow, en plein air, with rainwater often dripping down the canvas.
Now Pete the Street – a moniker he picked up from his insistence on working on the spot so that he can soak up the atmosphere of his surroundings – is the subject of a one-man show at Messum’s in Cork Street, Mayfair, from January 13 to February 12, launching the new year by cramming the whole of the Great Wen into a few square metres of wall space.
Brown, an art student turned satellite dish engineer, gave up the safety of the day job to paint full time around 20 years ago.
Previous books and collections of paintings have focused on his home city of Bath and his travels in India. Each is accompanied by a fascinating commentary of what happened around him as he painted.
These led up to the much larger London book, reflecting his obsession with the city that he visits four times every week, travelling up from the West Country on a daily basis in his nine-seater VW van.
It is no coincidence that Pete the Street has ended up showing at Messum’s. His impressionistic work, inspired by the likes of Walter Sickert and Ruskin Spear, follows the gallery’s dedication to what it recognised as an individual artistic movement that it controversially dubbed British Impressionism.
Perhaps that is also why in 2006 Brown found himself painting from the window of Room 508 – where Monet had worked a century before – as the hotel’s first artist-in-residence.
David Messum, who describes Brown as a ‘virtuoso painter who echoes the talent of the old masters’, sensed ‘something great in the making’ when he bumped into the artist on a traffic island in the middle of Piccadilly.
It was just one of the many extraordinary encounters Brown relates when talking about his life, many of which appear in his new book.
While painting Hammersmith Bridge, for instance, having returned to his van to renew his parking ticket, he came back to find a ‘wild, hairy man in a leather jacket’ painting a horse on his easel.
On St George’s Day by London Bridge, a fanfare heralded the approach of six men dressed in chain mail, draped in the colours of St George, blowing trumpets as they made their way along the towpath.
On another occasion, while painting in Eagle Place, he was approached by a beautifully dressed man who started dancing for him in the street. “He had just bought a grand piano for his 87th birthday and talked to me about working in the secret service. Meeting people like is that is a real treat.”
Less happy, initially, was a run-in with local council officials who tried to move him on in Piccadilly. While trying and failing to get through to their bosses on the phone, he used them as models for his picture. They liked the results and so left him to it.
As one of the most successful members of the New English Art Club working today, Pete the Street enjoys the “huge nostalgia involved in it”.
“Our greatest English painter is Constable or Freud, but I have a huge affinity for Walter Sickert, because of those impressionist roots. A lot of the members now are descendants of famous painters of the past, which I find fascinating.”
As well as Sickert, he admires Constable’s oil sketches, Richard Parkes Bonington and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, as well as Alfred Sisley.
“I also have a passion for Ruskin Spear’s domestic scenes and graphic lines. And we just stand back in awe at Freud.”
Now you can stand back in awe as Pete the Street’s London panoramas and street scenes hang together for the first time at Messum’s. It’s an experience he is looking forward to as well.
“I want to see how it hangs together because I really did paint the collection with the show in mind and this is the first chance to see if it will work.”
Peter Brown at Messum’s starts on January 13 and runs until February 12.
www.messums.com
(Shepherd Market)
Evening, Shepherd Market, 2015, oil on board, 16 x 12 inches.
______________________
If you would rather not receive future communications from Lucas Field Media, please go to http://eu.vocuspr.com/OptOut.aspx?3053006x20797x9934x1x2605719x24000x6&Email=annalondon8%40gmail.com.
Lucas Field Media, Fairacre Farnham Lane, Haslemere, Surrey GU27 1HA United Kingdom
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