Bio
Peter Watson-Wood is an award winning documentary cameraman and filmmaker, who first became addicted to painting in the late 60’s when living in West Cornwall during that historic post war period when an extraordinary community of artists were working in and around St Ives.
Amongst his close friends and influences were, Patrick Heron, Karl Weschke, Roger Hilton, Bryan Winter and many others. Peter was involved in documenting for television, the life and work of many of the artists, including films on the poet W.S. Graham and the celebrated sculptor Barbara Hepworth.
Apart from a brief year at Brighton College of Art, Peter is self-taught, but counts the privileged relationships he enjoyed with those iconic artists he worked with in West Cornwall, as very influential in shaping his early development as a painter.
In the 80’s and 90’s Peter became involved with the development and production of feature films and to date has produced twelve films for TV and cinema release. Some ten years ago, in spite of his very demanding role in film, his passion for painting became too strong to be ignored. Like many others in the world of media and entertainment, Peter finds his need to paint a wonderful release from his other life.
Peter is currently preoccupied with landscape in all its forms, but especially with the uncompromising, atavistic quality to be found in the ancient Cornish moors, carns, rocks and sea. The more recent paintings are moving away from the strictly figurative to interact with the elements of landscape in a non-linear way. “I feel that I have embarked on a renewed voyage of discovery to find my own voice and to explore the no-mans-land that exists between the disciplines of the figurative and the free-form of abstraction”. “The paintings are not replicas of any given scene, I don’t paint what I see – I paint what I feel.” “The pictures are an attempt to move inside the natural elements and experience the landscape through the very action of painting”.
Peter’s work is in private collections in the UK, France, Spain, Brazil and the US.
One man show ‘Remembered Landscapes’, Woburn Gallery, London June 2002.
‘Contemporary Landscape’, Rocket Gallery, Guildford, December 2002.
Mixed show, Ingo Finke Gallery, Battersea, Summer 2003
Seven paintings at Reeds Arts Festival, October 2004
‘Landscapes’, Room For Art, Cobham, December 2004
‘Abstract Art’, Room For Art, Cobham, April 2005.
