Peter Kent Art

• Home

• About the artist

• Large prints
  • Montmartre
  • Bastille
  • Paris Rollerbladers
  • Eiffel Tower, Pont Neuf
  • Notre Dame
  • Artists' Square, Montmartre
  • Ile de la Cité, Paris
  • Montmartre Steps
  • The Luxembourg Garden and The Pantheon, Paris
  • The Grand Palais
• Small prints
  • Eiffel Tower and Paris rooftops (1)
  • Montmartre rooftops and Eiffel Tower
  • Champs-Elysées café
  • Eiffel Tower, river Seine, Paris rooftops (3)
  • Notre Dame
  • Eiffel Tower and Paris rooftops (2)
  • Paris rooftops, Eiffel tower (4)
  • The River Seine and The D'Orsay Museum
  • Monmartre rooftops and Eiffel Tower (2)
  • Monmartre rooftops and Eiffel Tower (3)
  • Paris Streets
  • Boats by the river Seine (1)
  • Boats by the river Seine (2)
  • Boats by the river Seine (3)
  • The Luxembourg Garden
  • The Eiffel Tower and boats on the Seine (1)
  • The Eiffel Tower and boats on the Seine (2)
  • The Eiffel Tower and boats on the Seine (3)
  • Bastille boats
  • The Grand Palais and boats on the Seine (1)
  • The Grand Palais and boats on the Seine (2)
  • The Grand Palais and boats on the Seine (3)
• How to order
• Contact

Peter Kent painting the Eiffel Tower and Paris rooftops

 

I have been painting and drawing since the age of two. A childhood spent in the Sudan, Syria and Greece gave me a liking for discovering new places. I have lived in Paris since 1999.

School prizes in art followed by O level, A level, Art Foundation and Degree level art at Liverpool University represent a desire to examine the world and develop ways of representing it.

Art history matters: the present is a product of the past. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism are linked. Cézanne's paintings inspired Picasso and Braque to develop cubism. Van Gogh influenced Kirchner, Matisse and Derain to let their feelings decide what colours to use in a painting.

Mondrian's Abstract Expressionist paintings were based on something real such as the shape of branches of a tree, or the layout of streets in New York.

Peter Kent in Monet's garden at Giverny

If I see a scene in Paris I have to love it in order to want to paint it. I have to be in awe of it. As Matisse said, the artist should have an attitude of prayer when painting. I may do one Impressionist version of a scene where I am observing and submitting myself to it, letting the scene impose itself on me, forcing me to mix the colours on the palette till they match what I am looking at. Then a second painting of the same subject can be done in an Expressionist or Abstract Expressionist style, where I impose my feelings on the scene and let emotion interact with reality to produce the painting.

Which way to the Rive Gauche? (Paris 1983)

There are often more varied colours and forms in what we observe around us than in what we can invent in our heads. It is the interaction between what I observe and what I feel, together with colours, forms and ideas that are stored in my mind that I want to explore.

Colours and forms on a canvas may symbolize something real if in an arrangement that the viewer recognises. But even if the viewer does not recognise the arrangement, the work has been produced intentionally. So perhaps abstract art does not exist? Everything, including the artist, is part of nature and is real.

Peter Kent, June 2010.

All images and text on this site are protected by copyright.
© Peter Kent 2010-2012