Peter Messer - A6 Art on a Ukulele Print

Peter Messer

"I was born in 1954 and studied Fine Art at the University of Brighton. My work is mainly in egg tempera on a traditional gesso ground and I have exhibited in solo and group shows in the UK, US, Germany and France.

My paintings are mostly on a domestic scale, resolutely figurative and, by implication, narrative in the historic medium of egg tempera prepared in the studio using egg yolk and raw pigment. The work is frequently set in, around or parallel with my home town of Lewes. Whilst the settings are often recognizable, the implied narratives and tensions create an idiosyncratic world that sometimes unsettles and occasionally amuses. The paintings themselves often contain arrested moments in which ghosts, voices and unexpected creatures are confronted or sensed, all pinned down within a luminous deadpan egg tempera technique.

I hope that these are intent and watchful paintings which, for all their quiet ‘realism’, imply that the unseen exists and has properties. I do seem to use the word 'imply' a lot.”

Messer has exhibited in solo and group shows in the UK, US, Germany and France. His work is frequently exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and he has been a finalist in the Hunting, Garrick Milne, Lyn Painter-Stainers and Singer and Friedlander Prize exhibitions. In 1998 he won the Sotheby's -sponsored Chichester Art Prize and in 2000 was commissioned to provide twelve paintings for the Sussex Book of Revelations, an Arts Council Millennium Project which toured Sussex libraries. In 2004 he completed a commission for the House of Lords.