Peter van Straten

Peter van Straten’s work is driven by the kinetic energy caused by his perpetual swinging between awe, and horror, of the mundane. The everyday bores, yet simultaneously abounds with miracles, so that the artist is either celebrating the  astonishing shadow-world of daily reality, or else is desperately trying to escape its tedium - fleeing by canvas sail onto the endless ocean that is both Self and Life (indistinguishable forever.) Driven near-crazy by the sheer quantity and urgency of his suspicions, he seeks refuge in the Balsa wood fortress of poetic reasoning, where he sustains himself on tea and turpentine fumes.

Such is the intensity of the joy he derives from oil painting, and so numerous are the hours he has spent painting, that he counts himself as one of the luckiest people alive.