Biography
Peter Campbell had a personal, intuitive vision for what it meant to be an artist. Unrelentingly prolific, he engaged a large number of media and specialisms in an attempt to define that vision, all the time remaining true to his own rich, symbolic language and single-minded approach to making art.
Born in London in 1931, Peter studied at the London School of Printing and at Goldsmith’s College, and was employed for a number of years as an ‘advertising visualiser’ before turning his attention toward painting. Anti-ideology, anti-‘school’, even anti-‘artistic’, he worked obsessively toward an expression of his own mythological world. Unafraid of isolation, it was this singular dedication that allowed him to become one of East Anglia’s most accomplished romantic landscape painters.
In 1971, along with his wife and son, Peter made Suffolk his home. It was here that landscape became indelibly inscribed upon his work. From walks with his dogs, and trips exploring East Anglia, Cornwall and Ireland, Peter brought back to his studio a view of the natural environment as filled with adoration as it was with an excitement for nature’s capacity to reveal greater truths. This attitude resulted in countless works of vivid, dreamlike quality and startling expression.
Peter was the sort of artist who, enamored with the birds he saw out at sea circling the merchant vessel of his early formative years, searched for them and their significance for the rest of his days. Through art, through craft, and through a life view that sought to eradicate any difference between the two, these pursuits enlivened and emboldened Peter throughout his days.
“My intention is not to reproduce the apparent physical appearance of the natural world, but rather to choose and reshape the essence, as I see it, of the thing seen.”
Peter worked in oil, watercolour, drawing, enamels, wood & linocuts, and calligraphy. Travelling back to his hometown, he shared his language and approach as visiting lecturer in enamelling at the London University Institute of Education. He also illustrated a number of private press books for Skelton Press. Technically versatile, we are left here with an exceptionally broad and brilliant collection of Peter’s works.
Influences
Peter’s artistic language was made all the richer by his love for literature, and is filled with its references and tropes. The visionary, the mythological, antiquity and art history, along with Peter’s love of poetry and the human form, are all on stage in his work.
What Peter called his own ‘potty mythology’, a singular and personal life view, resonated always with the thousand voices of those who had gone before, voices Peter valued infinitely more than contemporary fashions or views.
Art and Crafts
Nowhere do we find Peter’s attitude regarding the making of art more clearly expressed than in his veneration of craft. Peter viewed the intricacies of a printing press as something both mechanical and holy, entirely more valuable in discussion than concepts of meaning that might lie hidden behind the works. For him such a mechanical process was in no way less ‘artful’ than perfecting the use of a brush or a pencil. It was this connection to ‘making’ that allowed his “Heap of things” to stretch across those so-called great divisions of art and craft, divisions which for Peter simply did not exist.
Mythology
From Prometheus to Helen of Troy, Peter’s voracious reading of the myths, legends and fables of the ancient world not only supplied much of the content for his symbolic language, but also informed his singular vision for what art should be: functional, an “Art of something made properly”. For the ancients there was always this element of art serving some greater purpose beyond itself, the myth as being lesson giving, brought to those who wrote them down as a gift from the gods. As fascinated by the tales of King Arthur - the sleeping Lord - as by the classical poets, Peter’s eclectic tastes tied his own purposeful and personal seeking of the truth to that which had gone on for many thousands of years.
Religion
Despite being an agnostic, Peter valued the revelatory capability of the established religions. From the striking enamel of St Peter glimmering at the end of the hallway in The Abbey in Eye, to the smaller talismanic works in the same medium, and the sketchbooks that abound with the 12 Stations of the Cross drawing exercises - a traditional method for artists to pursue and perfect their skills - religiosity and a vivifying concept of worship through art and creativity are evident throughout much of Peter’s work.
Techniques
The singularity of Peter’s vision in no way meant a limitation to the breadth of his approach. Rather it was the purity of his artistic ideal that caused him to constantly seek out new techniques. Peter studied art at a time when drawing skills were paramount. He worked as a commercial artist before developing his talents in lettering, carving and fine art, and went on to experiment in and perfect oil painting, watercolour, and calligraphy, becoming a master in enamelling, etching and works in acrylic.
Tireless, it was his drive toward an ever illusive materialisation of his inner view that meant his artistic sanctuary was as much a workshop as a studio, his hands turning constantly toward different articulations and nuances through a necessary abundance of approaches and techniques.