Andrew
Peters
Artist Biography
Artist Biography
Andrew
Peters paintings are a result of a life spent in nature.
Growing up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he was usually
hunting and fishing with his father in the Missouri
River Valley. At nearby Fontenelle Forest he was mentored
in ecology by naturalist James Malkowski. He drew birds
from life and Audobon prints, and studied academic
painting in the studio of Fran Day. He earned a Bachelor
of Sciences degree from Iowa State University with
a minor in art, and won the Iowa Duck Stamp competition
at the age of 22 which launched his fine art career.
The Joslyn Art Museum provided Andrew with his earliest
art lessons and the complete collection of original
watercolors by Karl Bodmer which kindled his passion
for travel and painting onsite. He roamed Africa for
a year painting game animals and indigenous peoples.
He has painted throughout North and South America and
in Romania, Morocco, Spain, Italy, France, and Ireland.
His plein air paintings faithfully capture light and
beauty from life and are a key strength of his richly
imbued larger works. "A painting should read like a
window onto a place," he says, "luminous and fresh."
He believes that light - not line - determines form.
During each summer, Andrew roams the intermountain
west painting in the Nomad, his travel trailer modified
into a studio. It puts him near his subjects for as
long as needed to create works both elaborate and true.
He builds crates, ships to galleries and museums and
continues onward in search of new landscapes. "It is
sustainable travel, mostly in wilderness and without
constraints." He has traveled 16,000 miles in a few
months in this way and believes it to be the best way
to create the highest quality paintings of the American
landscape.
Andrew Peters paintings are again hanging in the 2010
Prix de West Invitational Exhibition at the National
Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
It is the premier museum show in the nation. His paintings
have hung in the Autry Museum of Western Heritage,
National Museum of Wildlife Art, Joslyn Art Museum,
Cincinnati Museum Center, and Great Plains Art Museum
among others. Art of the West magazine featured Andrew's
work in the 2009 March/April issue.
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