Peter Cleverley was born in Oamaru in 1954. In 1974 he graduated with a Diploma in Fine and Applied Arts from the Otago Art School, then travelled overseas returning in 1980.
From 1982 he has worked part-time to support his more experimental art practice, including, art at Waitaki Boys’ High School, an Exhibitions Officer/ Curator at the Forrester Public Gallery in Oamaru and from 1990 onwards Painting and Drawing Lecturer B.F.A. and M.F.A. programmes at Otago Polytechnic Art School in Dunedin.
Peter has lectured and participated in many group and solo exhibitions throughout New Zealand and has work in numerous private, public and Municipal Gallery collections.
My painting has always been about the Human Condition, alluded to via the use of text rather than any figurative elements. There is a backdrop of a very imagined landscape or seascape, to acknowledge the inspirational surrounding environment, an inclusion of developed, internationally recognized signs and symbols that help reference the politics of the works, (e.g. a sea anchor, a cross, a skull & crossbones), and the text, which is all at once a title, a poem, a familiar saying, a song and most important, an integral aesthetic, that further informs the viewer. I parallel an actuality, an experience, something real, something witnessed or that which I’m compelled to discuss, with a composition, that stems from observations but progresses to deliberately defy nature’s reality, to refrain from copying anything that we see already and create something new, foremostly for me, then for the eye of other beholders. The message and the aesthetic power of the imagery remain my primary concerns.
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