I’ve always painted since my earliest childhood and can’t remember life before painting. It has been a passion of mine throughout school and on to foundation and then degree level at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, where I gained a first class honours degree in 1988. It’s a wonderful way to spend the day, thinking up new ideas, sketching and developing them, before working on the finished piece. It doesn’t feel like work and fits in with life down in Devon where I live with my wife, Lindsey, and our children Billy and Isobel. I can use the time spent with them on the beach, or walking on the cliffs, thinking of new designs, or gaining inspiration. I really enjoy my work and don’t find it hard to settle down to paint, even with all the pleasant distractions surrounding us.

I work from home in a studio in the front of the house. We can see the sea and right over to Wales on a clear day. So when I’m not watching the ships sail by, that’s where I can be found. I like the traditional methods of drawing and painting, working up ideas from thumbnail sketches in my sketchbooks, to more detailed drawings and then finally adding colour. I use a variety of mediums, including watercolour, conte crayons, oil and chalk pastels, heavy-bodied acrylics, inks and gouache. It all depends on the design. I also use the computer, but with sketches drawn by hand and then scanned in. I like there to be an element of my drawing style in the computer generated images, so you can still see that it is created by an artist, not a machine.

Over the last 18 years I have produced designs for a variety of products ranging from greetings cards, stationery, book illustration, giftware, original paintings and limited edition prints and sculptures. We have some very quirky Christmas decorations which I designed for a company in the States - not many people have lobsters on their Christmas trees! I enjoy turning my hand to new ideas and designs, which is why it is so good to work on a variety of projects. It is important to keep up to date with current trends and I am always on the lookout for sources of inspiration, through galleries and touring exhibitions, magazines, books, the internet and even kids television programmes. I might look like I’m chillin’ with the kids on the sofa, but really I’m working …honest!

See Peter's Gallery