creates pensive yet rollicking canvases, expressing a fascinating vision of life’s complex and opposing rhythms. His canvases attract the eye with their unsettling but convincing composition of muted color blocks, twisting and looping white or black lines, and geometric figures formed by striped bands of startling red and white. Drawing closer, the viewer is further transfixed by their sensuous surfaces—a complex interplay of expressive brushwork, scribbles and drips, along with collaged papers and fabrics, and subtly figurative drawn elements, all layered in a way that suggests an intricate, intelligent game of mysterious activity.
As a child in Arkansas during the fifties, Peters was encouraged in art by his father, owner of a sign painting business. His teacher at Little Rock’s Central High School introduced him to abstract expressionism, the avant-garde art of the era. Peters was immediately taken with the rationale, style and execution of this highly expressionistic genre. In 1962, during a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York with his father, Peters was inspired by the works of Picasso, de Kooning, Pollock and, particularly, Ad Reinhardt.
Peters studied art history and design while a college student in Arkansas. He attended Little Rock University and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. One of his pieces was accepted into the Arkansas Arts Center’s annual Delta, a regional competitive exhibition, while he was still a student; another was accepted two years later. These early successes inspired him to continue painting even as he considered a career in theater. He studied drama at the Arts Center’s School of Arts and Drama, then spent a year in California with the San Francisco Mime Troupe designing sets and directing.
Since then, Peters has pursued his painting career while gaining renown through solo and group exhibitions in major art centers as far-flung as New York, Atlanta, Boca Raton, Santa Fe, Houston and Los Angeles. Over the years, he has earned many accolades including awards in competitive exhibitions, fellowships and solo exhibitions in major cities. His work is represented in a host of private and public collections from Little Rock to London.
Alternate: ethical: assumption, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
Astonishing: univeral; autonomy, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 72 x 60 inches
Question: articulated; experience, 2007 oil and mixed media on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Inseparable: encountered; finality, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
Emblematic: turning; reversal, 2012 oil and mixed media on canvas, 36 x 47.75 inches
"In positioning his structures in a space that is too fluid with raw instinct to give them footing, he has turned them into emblems of a transformative experience too primordial to be remembered. Nonetheless, it survives in feelings of symbolrecovery and self-discovery, which are the basic psychic activities of Peters' paintings."
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Donald Kuspi
Author and critic; Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Andrew Dixon White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Declared: structural; enigma, 2019 oil and mixed media on canvas, 39.75 x 30 inches
Essence: perpetual; sphere, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
Assumption: emerging; vitality No. 2, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Dispatch: modified; treatment, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 30 x 48 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 5, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 1, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 12 x 16 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 6, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 2, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 3, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 4, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Defined: joyous; substance No. 7, 2024 oil and mixed media on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Sammy Peters
Born: Shreveport, Louisiana 1939
Resides: Little Rock, Arkansas since 1944
Education:
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
Little Rock University, Little Rock, AR
Arkansas Arts Center School of Arts and Drama, Little Rock, AR
San Francisco Mime Troupe, San Francisco, CA
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2019 Boundaries Extended, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
2018 Sammy Peters: Recent Paintings, Mason Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
2016 Then and Now, Memphis College of Art, Hyde Gallery; University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, Windgate Gallery
2015 LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2014 Arkansas Tech University, Russelville, AR
2013 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM (8 solo exhibitions 1999-2013)
2013 Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta, GA
2008 The Heights Gallery, Little Rock, AR (7 solo shows 1986-2008)
Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta, GA
Bentley Projects, Phoenix, AZ
2007 Multiple Impressions, New York, NY
2005 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
Sammy Peters
2004 Contemporanea, Hot Springs, AR, (3 solo exhibitions 1995-2004)
Craighead/Green Gallery, Dallas, TX
2003 Hendrix College, Conway, AR
2002 New Gallery, Houston, TX, (2 solo exhibitions 1989-2002)
