Outside New York
Flint Institute of Arts

Outside New York, An Exhibition Curated by Graham Peacock.. January 24 - February 11 (1990): page 23

Education: Goldsmith's School of Art, London University, 1962-66; Post Graduate Studies, Leeds College of Art, 1966-67; Italian Government Scholarship, The British School at Rome, 1968-69. 

Teaching: Newport College of Art, England, 196768; University of Alberta, Professor since 1969.            

Exhibitions: Since 1971 Peacock has held 20 one man exhibitions in Edmonton, St. Johns, Nfld., Calgary, the Atlantic provinces touring, Toronto, Montreal and Victoria, B.C. The most recent were a 5 year retrospective 'Paint Process and Spirit' 1982-87 at the Edmonton Art Gallery (catalogue available) and new works at the Gallery on Whyte, Edmonton. Since 1969 Peacock's work has been included in over 100 group, provincial, national and international exhibitions in England, Japan, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary, Saskatoon, Los Angeles, Johannesburg and Edmonton.

Workshops: The Edmonton Art Gallery, Michael Steiner Workshop, 1973; Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1980 and 1981; Inaugural Triangle Workshop, Pine Plains, New York, 1982; Leader of the Thupelo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1986. 

Artist's Statement

In 1982, I discovered a new way of drawing by causing the paint to separate, allowing layers of color to break through an all-over surface. I am a process abstractionist who intervenes in the paint composition to cause a particular set of events to occur which has been called "crazing". This has allowed me to explore all-over painting together with the polychromatic color from which my work has developed, influenced in the past by Noland, Louis, Pollock, Poons and Olitski. The shaping of the paintings became necessary in order to follow the compositional variations cropped from lengths of canvas, an approach and freedom which I learned from Poons. I paint on lengths much like film making where one edits down to frame the best, although my approach and set up changes as required. In recent work the shaping is increasingly organic, without a frame, coinciding with the internal drawing of the work. The imagery of my work has many associations with natural topographical formations of rock, ponds and underwater microscopic organisms which are inherent in the formations of the paint. I am stimulated by these and cultivate my painting process to explore their random pictorial possibilities. I try to make my work uplifting in feeling, refreshing in spirit, which renews in me the inspiration to paint again.