But maybe, he concedes, Vermeer
Life Tide
secretly did have an imagination
– but he never let it show in his
paintings. He painted pretty much
what was in front of him – reality
undistorted. He never got around
to painting Girl with an Elephant
Necklace or Woman Reading a
Banana. Which got us talking about
the nature of reality, which can be
a dangerous thing to discuss with a
surrealist, or, as Peter prefers to be
described, a magical realist. He sees
faces and landscapes in things. His
“It’s the purpose of the imagination to imagine what
“reality” is totally elastic.
could be,” he says. “We know what is … or do we? The socalled mundane is unfathomably rich. Go into the ocean
“Actually,” he concludes, “I prefer
or look into a microscope; universes within universes. So,
to think of my paintings as windows
in order to represent Reality with a big R, you need to
– windows into all the potential
distort reality with a small r.”
“Elsewheres”, and into the profundity
While Peter doesn’t call himself a surrealist, because there
was so much more to the surrealist movement than art,
That all sounds very nice, but then
his work shares many of its characteristics – and even its
we looked around at his paintings,
intention. The aim of surrealism, in the words of Brazilian
and could not shake off the sense
designer Fábio Sasso, is to “expose psychological truth by
that, rather than depicting reality, he
stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance,
distorted it. After all, roads are not
to create compelling images that exist beyond ordinary
usually rivers, school children don’t
formal organisation, in order to evoke empathy from the
commute by elephants, and beds
viewer.”
are, in my experience, subject to the
force of gravity.
And that’s pretty much what Peter does. He doesn’t paint
just for the sake of making a picture; almost every element
“That,” he retorts, “is because there is
is carefully placed to create some form of symbolism. So,
“reality” with a small “r” and “Reality”
if you hang a Van Straten on your wall, you’re not just
with a big “R” – which includes the
filling a blank space (although it will do that with style
spiritual and the intellectual and the
and aplomb), you’re creating a focus for reimagining your
emotional and the mind-boggling
life. It’s a window into worlds that could be, or could not
library of scientific fact.” He hesitates,
be – that may happen or may never happen. Or may have
thinks. “Or theories,” he continues.
happened somewhere. If nothing else, it will get people
“That’s better. Because fact … I mean,
thinking and talking.
define fact.”
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DESIGN & DECOR
and magnificence of reality.”