Peter Campbell (b.1963), was an honors graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design (1989), where he studied as a photographer. When he moved to Colorado in 1995, Campbell left the world of photography for the more interpretive world of painting. However, he has always maintained his obsession with the play of light against the wilderness.
Early in his career as a painter, he came to embrace intuitively a palette and vision that resembled late 19th and early 20th century tonalists. Recently, however, he has adopted more lively color renditions. Working from sketches and plein-air studies, he recreates a sense of place with his facility for realism in balance with a painterly quality. Filtered through a life spent outdoors in constant evaluation of light and its relationship to the land and natural matter, Campbell’s interpretations amount to more than mere valleys, rivers or widespread vistas. He specializes in making the commonplace extraordinary through a poetic use of color, shape, and perspective. His work presents to the viewer a sublime but restrained dialogue of land, light, and temporality, rendering images that are profoundly quiet and familiar.
While Campbell travels frequently in search of new landscapes to paint, he often finds that some of his favorite works are inspired by local landscapes. Although well known for his tonalist landscapes of light and water, and for the quiet mood these works evoke, Campbell also paints still-lifes, portraits, and plein-air studies. His work is based on light, form, color and composition. Working mainly from sketches, memory and life, Campbell brings quiet contemplation to the overlooked natural world. His works grow in depth over time and repeated exposure.
Campbell won the Best of Show award at the Boulder Plein Air Festival, 2017, and the Best of Show award at the Aspen Red Brick Plein Air Event, 2015 and 2016. He has been a finalist in the Art Muse Contest, the Art Renewal Center Landscape Competition and the Portrait Society of America’s Outside the Box competition. Recently, he placed in the Portrait Society of America’s Landscape competition, and has been given Signature status in the Plein Air Painters of Colorado.