Peter Yates: Painting With Time
By Elliott Nimmo
▼
The diminishment of our attention span - and what it means for our culture - has rightfully attracted much recent reflection. ‘Second screen enough’ (as in, easy enough to follow while you’re also scrolling on your phone) films; online articles that feature a first-par summary so you don’t need to read the whole thing; musicians releasing sub-three minute long songs … this bitty content is delivered by the algorithm in a homogenised torrent straight to our little screens.
But, in spite of the rising tide of content-becomes-culture, examples of long-form creation by hand and eye persist all over the world. The work of Lutruwita/Tasmania-based artist Peter Yates, whose realist paintings of people and the landscape carry a luminous momentum that builds the longer you spend time with them, is one such example.
Peter Yates
Peter works with time as much as he does with oil and pigment. In the cold, loamy darkness of morning, he’ll scramble into the car and drive up to Kunanyi/Mt Wellington to paint the sunrise. He’ll trek through the rainforest to find the right light, and he could be there painting for hours. And then, once he returns to his studio, he pours out time and mixes it with colours, brushes it on - and he waits. He paints and waits, adding layers, shifting colour, building form.
A marine scientist by trade, Peter’s relationship with nature has long been fostered through his work. But since moving to Tasmania in 2015, that relationship has become one experienced through paint. During Covid, Peter was able to devote swathes of time to painting. His practice flourished, and he ended up winning the Basil Sellars Prize for a portrait of Will Young, a British singer-songwriter. The prize was transformative: first, for his confidence, and second, for his finances. He was able to undertake a rigorous ten-week classical art program in France, and wander the galleries of Europe. Since then, Peter has been a finalist in the Mosman and Henry Jones Art Prizes, and the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award.
“I want to record my experience as a human in this world,” says Peter in his Moonah studio. His portraits are intimate contemplations exploring the relationship that humans have with their surrounds.
In Solace (2024), a woman in profile is rugged up in white fleece standing before a pastel sunset. Years of training reveal themselves in details: the quality of the light suggests that it is cold, but the subject doesn’t seem to feel uncomfortable. Then there is the subtle, blue reflection of the water on the woman’s forehead; the way it haloes her back. It’s work like this that shows time most acutely: time on location, time with the subject, time sketching, time painting in the studio, time looking.
Solace, Peter Yates
Peter is currently working on a suite of paintings informed by recent travels to Antarctica and time spent in the forest. You can view his work on his website.
▼
