15 August – 31 August 2024
about the exhibition
Throughout Peter Boggs’ career, he has been captivated by the mysterious qualities of light. This exhibition explores the notion of beauty in landscape through glimpses of Italian scenes, not explicitly revealed but drawn from recollections of his experiences over the years. Peter skilfully constructs his dream-like compositions through delicate tonal layering of oil paint. Meandering passageways and serene roads that disappear into the shadows of trees or distant horizon invite contemplation. For Peter, the beauty of a place resides in its emotional and spiritual resonance. He says, “…it is the silent stillness that is the aim; no trace of life or movement; rather a still and silent portrayal of something beautiful…”. As eminent art critic and historian Professor Sasha Grishin has observed of Peter’s work, “Peter Boggs is one of Australia’s finest tonal painters…Boggs possesses a rare ability to evoke a mood or sensation without illustrating it or employing a literal narrative. These are subtly “transfigured realities” that simultaneously appear real and almost tangible, but, at the same time, abstracted – almost like a dreamscape – something exists that is not fully graspable by the eye and needs to be sensed and somehow intuitively felt.”
Born in New Zealand, Peter studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, and taught painting and drawing in England and Spain before moving to Australia in 1987. He has held over sixty solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia, and was a finalist in both the McMillan Ford Art Award and the Fleurieu Biennale, South Australia. He was the winner of the 2008 Kedumba Drawing Award as well as the 1998 Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize. He has been a finalist in numerous prizes including most recently the 2020 Calleen Art Award at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery. In 2014, the survey exhibition, ‘Mysterious Realities; the art of Peter Boggs’ was held at Orange Regional Gallery, NSW. Peter’s work is represented in various collections including Parliament House, Kedumba Drawing Collection, Castlemaine Art Gallery, University of Queensland Art Museum, Newcastle Art Gallery, News Limited, Tattersall’s Club, Telstra, NZ Education Board and Auckland City Art Gallery (New Zealand).
