Bringing paintings to life

Peter Colbert’s career as a fine artist of note has been long and exciting, having found great success after years of working as an art director and illustrator.

In his early days of drawing the human figure in art college, Peter was struck by the power of gesture drawing - the quick studies that had movement and power, without the usual extraneous details added when the pose was of a longer duration. In this situation, the model was more relaxed and comfortable while the study itself was, to Peter, less interesting. His goal was to focus on the general dynamics and feeling - and he has endeavoured to do this with most of his figure studies.

His landscapes and abstracts paintings, meanwhile, have been exercises in creative exploration, where experiments in mixing and applying colour have been most fascinating to him. Most of these follow the general aim of his figurative paintings, meaning searching for dynamic simplicity and clarity.

Peter has lived and worked in Toronto and Vancouver and now resides in Ottawa with his wife Nancy (and their best pal, Rocky, the Parson Russell Terrier).