Tamarind 6, 2024
Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in
PETER BUREGA
Gyspies in the Night
Peter Burega is a superb painter and a consummate romanticist, willing to empty landscape of its familiar forms in order to distill, purify, capture, and preserve in his paintings only the most exhilarating emotional resonances of the ineffable beauty of places he’s seen. In so doing, Burega manifests in them a deeply felt intuitive appreciation of that elusive but exquisite quality known as the sublime. His abstractions derive from his unmediated impressions and responses to nature he shares as resonances of what they’re like. In the subtle presence of these sensations evident in his work, there is a feeling of equanimity, of peace where imagination can run free with “memories like gypsies in the night.”
Nature can of course be nearly overwhelming in the awesomeness of its observed beauty. The fullness of this beauty humbles even the greatest of artists and poets. But in these responses and from the contemplation of their ultimate incomprehensibility, there resides the glowing heart of the sublime, that precious gift of astonishment and wonder, of being exquisitely overwhelmed, of knowing (feeling) that there is a realm of the infinite beyond the human capacity to fully know. This is the ultimate sense of exhilaration that touches the soul.
All this emerges in Burega's paintings that emanate from his keen observations and impressions of beautiful places – land, sea, sky. His work masterfully abstracts spontaneous iterations of those experiences and the beauty the artist has experienced there, thought deeply about, and felt passionately, all of it metamorphosed into his oils on canvas and panel. The viewer experiences from his paintings a sense of transcendence to a nebula of pure feeling that enchants, beckons memory, and imparts a deep sense of enduring quiet joy.
Peter Burega was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1965. He was trained as a concert pianist at the Royal Conservatory of Toronto, received a B.A. in Art History and Sociology from McGill University in Montreal, and subsequently earned a J.D. from Whittier College in Los Angeles. His paintings are included in numerous important collections.
It’s the ethereal nature of Burega’s process of layering and scraping and creating haphazard patterns in a simultaneously staccato and linear approach that’s reminiscent of Cubism. If you took the work of the Impressionists, or the Romanticists (particularly J.M.W. Turner), and filtered it through a Cubist lens, it might look something like this. Burega is like a modern-day Turner, dialing up the abstraction not just to evoke the feeling tones inherent in our relationship to the natural world, but opening the channel to greater truths that soar from his canvases, giving freer reign.
La Tortue, 2024 Oil on canvas, 60 x 72.25 in
Moss March, No. 3 2024 Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in
Gibbs Bay, 2024 Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in
Moon River No. 3, Oil on canvas, 48.2 x 60 in
Teseque Ridge, No.3, 2024 Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in
White Marsh No.5, 2024 Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in
White Marsh No.6, 2024 Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in
PETER BUREGA
EDUCATION
1984-87
B. 1965 in MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA
2014 Julie Mushafer, Boston, MA
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
B.A. from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
1987-91 Juris Doctorate from Whittier College, Los Angeles, CA
1990 Comparative Law from University of Florence, Florence, Italy
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2024 Gypsies in the Night,LewAllen Galleries,Santa Fe, NM
2023 West of the Moon, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2022 Changing Light, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
All the Stars in the Sky, Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
SouthHampton Art Fair, Abbozzo Gallery
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2021 SmithKlein, Boulder, CO
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2020 The Sky Lies Open, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2019 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
Art on Paper (LewAllen Galleries), New York, NY
New River Fine Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
2018 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY
Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Smith Klein Gallery, Boulder, CO
Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
New River Fine Art, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
L.A. Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Smith Klein Gallery, Boulder, CO
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
New River Fine Art, Ft Lauderdale, FL
2016 Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Smith Klein Gallery, Boulder, CO
New River Fine Art, Ft Lauderdale, FL
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
SR Brennan Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
2015 Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe,
2013
2012
2011
Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA
Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2010 McLarry Modern, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
Bennett Street Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2009
2008
Meyer East Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Bennett Street Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Meyer East Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, New York, NY & Palm Desert, CA
2007 Gallery 225, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, New York, NY
Mulry Fine Art, Palm Beach, FL
2007 Art Basel, Miami, FL
2006
2005
2005
2004
Ventana Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, Palm Desert, CA & New York, NY
Mulry Fine Art, Palm Beach, FL
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Coda Gallery, New York, NY
Ventana Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Ventana Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, Boca Raton, FL
2003 Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Coda Gallery, New York, NY
2002
2001
Coda Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Coda Gallery, New York, NY
Coda Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Île Coco, 2024, Oil on canvas, 48 x 72 in
