Peter Messer - A Dance Beneath the Lake
Peter Messer - A Dance Beneath the Lake
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"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.
“The setting for this painting, ‘A Dance Beneath The Lake’ Is the underwater smoking room at Witley Park, Surrey. This is a Victorian folly built by a rather dubious millionaire.
Originally it would have been furnished with upholstered banquettes and potted plants but is now in the slightly dilapidated condition shown in the painting. The male figure is based on the Bowie of the Dangerous Moonlight period and the female one is loosely derived from an old image of Coco Chanel. The two dancing rats aren't based on anybody.
I felt there was something evocative about the seemingly precarious structure, the huge weight of water and the fragile energy of the dancers."
The original artwork was specially created for the Sound & Vision Auction (2024), presented by Art on a Postcard in collaboration with War Child.
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