Peter Joyce - Marks of Passage

About

Joyce is a British painter who is currently living and working in the marshland of remote western France. Peter has a long established reputation among Modern British artists and is considered a key figure by collectors, advisors, curators and decorators.  With a successful career spanning twenty-five years, his work is exhibited at the major London art fairs and held in private and public collections internationally.

In recent years, Joyce has mostly lived and worked in La Vendee in western France, a flat landscape reclaimed from the sea, with marshy fields interlaced with canals, dykes and creeks. Throughout the landscape can be seen relics of the once important salt harvesting industry giving it a feeling of abandonment, as well as being home to a wide variety of wildlife and migrating birds. 

According to leading art critic, Ian Massey; “There is so much to look at and appreciate in Peter’s paintings. They can be viewed on a visual level as beautifully balanced compositions of form, texture and colour. But this would miss out on the serious intent and deep thought that goes into his work, as well as his understanding of his own relationship with the landscape with all its force and fragility.” 

Forty-two paintings reveal Joyce’s continued study of the salt pan area. His work is informed by daily walks in the physical environment, noting the landscape and atmospheric conditions and occasionally he will alight on something that might trigger an idea from which to start a new picture. It might be as simple as a piece of red thread caught on a wire fence. Painting in acrylics, layering through collage and then scraping away, he also uses pieces of canvas and hessian in his work which sometimes remain evident in the final work and are sometimes submerged within the painting.

Jenna Burlingham Fine Art, Peter Joyce’s main representative, specialises in Modern British paintings, prints, ceramics and sculpture, as well as work by selected contemporary artists. Jenna has over twenty years’ experience in the art world, having worked in an auction house and then an art dealership in London prior to opening her own gallery in 2010.