SammyPeters
INTERNAL NARRATIVE
SammyPeters I N T E R N A L N A R R AT I V E JUNE 7 - JULY 7 . 2013
Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallencontemporary.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: Exception: attempted; acceptance, 2013, oil and mixed media on canvas, 40” x 40”
Sammy Peters Internal Narrative highly expressionistic genre. Sammy Peters studied painting at Little Rock University and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and has since gained renown through exhibitions in major art centers such as New York, Atlanta, Boca Raton, Santa Fe, Houston and Los Angeles. He has received numerous fellowships, awards, and grants, and most notably was inducted as a MacDowell Fellow in 2000.
Through a complex interplay of expressive brushwork, sweeping gestural marks, drips and collage, Peters fills canvas with his signature muted hues and architectonic forms, while employing saturated tones and jazzy rhythms. “Painting is a way for the artist to feel a connection with and contribute to an ‘internal narrative,’ his or her fiction, that seems to mercifully cloak our lives, protecting and insulating us from a barren, unresponsive reality,” says Peters of his work. Peters is heralded for his animated cadence with shape and line, between opacity and translucence, material and image, color and texture, creating dialogue between space and poetic figures. He refers to his works as the act of painting, as meditations on questions. Paintings seem to have evolved through a process of back and forth, destruction and reconstruction, where images are fleeting and morph into another shape or are completely destroyed. The result: a visual recreation of the ebb and flow of rumination. “The facture in Peters’ new work is seductive but not slick, alluring but not pandering. Its appeal resides as much in its promise of deeper perceptual challenges as in it syndication of partial (but only partial) resolution,” said Peter Frank, former Senior Curator at Riverside Art Museum and Huffington Post contributor. As a child in Arkansas during the fifties, Peters was encouraged in art by his father, owner of a sign painting business. His teacher at Little Rock’s Central High School introduced him to abstract expressionism, the avant-garde art of the era. Peters was immediately taken with the rationale, style and execution of this 2
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Disclosed: universal; affect, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 60” x 48”
Suggestion: viable; assertion, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 72” x 60”
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Relation: determined; paradigm, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 48� x 48�
Conception: enigma; transforming, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 48” x 48”
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Difference: tangled; reconciliation, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 72� x 60�
Variation: specific; contribution, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 40� x 40�
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Repetition: determined; mirroring, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 48� x 48�
Displacement: returning; notion, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 48� x 60�
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Concentric: covert; tension, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 30� x 40�
Revalued: system; response, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 48” x 60”
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Reckoning: passive; internal, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 36� x 48�
Tentative: underlying; spaces, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas 60� x 72�
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Reflection: arbitrary; necessity, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas 40” x 40”
Dependent: unconscious; reminder No.1, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas on board 15.5� x 14.5�
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Dependent: unconscious; reminder No.2, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas on board 15.5� x 14.5�
Momentary: generated; departure No. 1, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas on board 14.5� x 15.5�
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Momentary: generated; departure No. 3, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas on board 14.5� x 15.5�
Momentary: generated; departure No. 2, 2013 oil and mixed media on canvas on board 15.5� x 14.5�
Railyard: 1613 Paseo De Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 Downtown: 125 West Palace Avenue | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.8997 www.lewallencontemporary.com | info@lewallengalleries.com