P R O F I L E

Peter Collyer paints watercolours of shimmering intensity. His subject is the landscape of the British Isles. He describes his work as a 'pursuit of the history of the landscape, its shaping by man and nature, the working and weathering of the land and its endless interaction with the sea'.

Peter Collyer became well known through his paintings of the chalk downland of his adopted county, Wiltshire. Since painting a series of pictures along the Dorset coastal footpath for his first London one-man exhibition - at Francis Kyle Gallery in 1990 - the coastline has also been a major inspiration. 

His odyssey around Britain's surrounding seas to paint the sea areas and coastal stations of the Shipping Forecast for his first book Rain Later, Good brought him to a wider audience, with several television appearances, numerous interviews on local radio stations and with Libby Purves on BBC Radio 4's Midweek programme.

Rain Later, Good was adopted by the RNLI as the publication to celebrate their 175th anniversary. His third book, Encompassing Britain, is being sold in support of the National Trust's Neptune Coastline Campaign.

Libby Purves writes in her foreword to Encompassing Britain:
...he is not only a marvellous, delicate draughtsman and watercolourist...but a dryly observant writer and amateur naturalist. To chronicle the sea-coast appears to be his chosen life's work, and we should be grateful.

His fourth and latest book is Offshore, his personal view of a selection of Britain's islands.

Peter's watercolours were successfully exhibited at Chris Beetles' gallery in St. James's, London, for 13 years until 2006. 

Born in Northampton, about as far from the sea as you can get in England, he has an Honours Degree in Fine Art, is a Brother of the Art Workers Guild and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

'I'm not interested in making marks for their own sake, in fact I try to disguise my brush strokes. I want the viewer to see through the surface of the painting to the scene I have witnessed and recorded, that's what the work is about; the location. If it makes you want to go there to see it for yourself then it has worked'.

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