Los Angeles based artist David Allan Peters’ brilliantly kaleidoscopic works push the boundaries of acrylic paint as well as traditional practices of painting. Using a linocut knife, Peters dives into his works, cutting, sculpting, and carving through finely layered paint to reveal intricate, pulsating color patterns.
Once his panels are adequately layered, Peters maps out a grid before beginning the highly physical process of cutting into his works. “Once I start cutting, that’s when the color and pattern starts happening,” Peters says. “I can go deeper, higher, lower. That’s the payoff, finding the right mixture to make the painting harmonious.”
From a distance, Peters’ vibrantly variegated works appear flattened, but a closer look reveals their carefully crafted, undulating texture and a multitude of varying perspectives. As Phoebe Hoban writes, “Peters meticulously carves away the surface of his vividly colored, tactile paintings to reveal their underlying layers. Ghosts of earlier images don’t gradually emerge: The artist literally cuts open his work so that you can see it, and then see it again. A masterful synthesis of process and product, art and artifact, each piece, like a topographical map, is a textured strati cation that artfully tracks its own history.”
DAVID ALLAN PETERS (b. 1969, Cupertino, CA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA, and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA.
He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including Royale Projects: Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; Royale Projects: Contemporary Art, Palm Desert, CA; AKA PDX, Portland, OR; “Super Optic,” Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, CA; “Paintings,” Marc Arranaga Contemporary Art, New York, NY; and “Integrity Spiral,” Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
Recent group exhibitions include the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Art Toronto 2017, Royal Projects, Toronto, Canada; “Hello My Name Is. . . Los Angeles,” Royale Projects, Los Angeles, C A; “Aftermath Post- Minimal Abstraction,” Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, CA; “Looking Back at Tomorrow,” Royale Projects: Contemporary Art, Palm Desert, CA; “Fresh,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; “Palette To Palate,” Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; “Spectrum,” Kellogg Gallery, Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, CA; and “Strataigraphic,” Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, CA.
He is the recipient of the Nora Bartine Memorial Award from De Anza College, Cupertino, CA, in 1994.
David Allan Peters lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.