Work of Peter Flanagan

Peter Flanagan – Artist Statement:

I have become increasingly interested in plein air landscape painting over the last few years. Painting directly from life, whatever the subject, involves all of the senses and becomes part of your life. The challenges are great in the landscape however, and it is constantly changing. The studio is a place to reflect on the work and perhaps adjust or finish work started outdoors.

There has to be a high degree of control and analyical precision I think, honed by years of study and repetition. This, combined with a passion for the subject and intuition allow the subject to reveal itself without an overt interference of the ego, balancing the zin and yang. Much of the time this ideal isn’t reached, but it is what I am striving for. To reflect upon, study, and appreciate the natural world is increasingly necessary in this era when the global environment is so threatened by mankind. I paint landscape plein air mainly to be filled up by the life around me and by it’s beauty.

Peter Flanagan – Biography:

I spent my first eighteen years living in various outposts of the retreating British Empire with my military family before settling in the north east of England. After eighteen years in Newcastle my wife Julie and I moved to an old farmhouse near Allendale in the North Pennines where we lived for fourteen years raising five free range children and a menagerie of animals. When they became teenagers we moved to the market town of Hexham nearby, where we now live.

I studied graphic design at Lincoln College of Art from 1976 then worked as a graphic designer in Newcastle. However I was pulled towards visual art and did a degree in Creative and Performing Arts at Northumbria University specialising in printmaking, graduating with a 2:1 degree in 1984. I have been a self-employed artist since 1986. For many years I was also a part time lecturer at Newcastle College where I ran the HNC in Fine Art, as well as other courses and colleges in the North East.

I have exhibited in London, Newcastle, Northumberland, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I have paintings in many private and corporate collections in Britain and abroad, including that of the Royal Family, Lord Dearing, Sir Peter Carr, Sir John Hall, Cherie and Tony Blair, Northern Rock, Barclays Bank and Northumberland Water.

Other interests have included reading widely, participating in competitive sport for forty years and playing music.