Pete “The Street” Brown, is a local legend and national treasure. He paints plein air all year round and is so prolific it blows my small mind – probably 3-5 paintings a week.
Rain, wind, snow and sun – nothing deters Peter from getting out onto the streets and painting. His usual areas are Bath (his home town), Bristol, London, Glasgow (my original home town) and New York, not a bad group.
What was it that grabbed me about this specific painting?
With Peter’s work it is always the palette. He completely nails the real world colours – never over saturates his work but delivers an instantly believable piece despite the brevity of information that’s really in his work. His editing of information is instinctive, based on his experience painting every day for 30 years.
In this painting, he delivers all the details accurately, to scale, all in the right place and properly lit – by giving you just enough information for your brain to complete the work.
It’s Pete’s brevity of information and mark making, that is his genius. His paintings are both photo realistic and completely painterly at the same time – how do you do that?!
How does this approach inform my style?
I’m treading a path between inaccuracy and over-working when I paint. What Peter’s work tells me is that getting the major fundamentals right gives you the foundation to play elsewhere.
As I said above, Pete’s colour is always bang-on the money. Everything is in the right place in terms of perspective and sale. He works hard in setting up these fundamentals – go watch him painting live on his Instagram to see the work he does (he’s a talker – so let’s you know what he’s doing), so you can see the framework build.
His colours are kept in a narrow band of hues and values, which is what allows him to bring in a bang of light that the real world brings.
Remember he’s doing this outdoors in the space, so creating a 2D painting of a 3D environment – rather than from a 2D photographic reference. This gives his work life and makes it a chronical of place.
His work is often of the mundane, rather than hubristic, and that’s part of the every day magic of his work – it’s a chronical of place and life and it’s done so so well.
About Peter Brown
Do check out Pete’s website for an overwhelming selection of works and sign-up to his newsletter too, that way you’ll find out about his open house events.
I went to his 2024 event and forgot my coat. I went back a couple of days later to collect it and we chatted for an hour or so about painting (it was like meeting a Rory McIlroy or David Beckhman for an artist), he made me a cuppa and he was super supportive of me as a fellow artist – a thoroughly good human being!
