peterjeffsart.com

My life as a painter began in my teens. Our home was filled with our Aunt’s paintings, mainly of Yorkshire landscapes, and of flowers. Mum and dad took us on one trip to London, and this was my first visit to the National Gallery. It made Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Gallery feel so small, and yet there were treasures to be found there like Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951). Glasgow was also the home of the Third Eye Centre, and their exhibitions in the late 70’s and early 80’s made their impact on my. My “unofficial” training continued at Durham’s Light Infantry Museum which regularly hosted touring Art’s Council shows. In Cambridge, the Fitzwilliam Museum continued to fashion my eye, along with the wonderful Kettle’s Yard, on Castle Hill, the home of Jim Ede bequeathed to the University on his death. Filled with St Ives artists, it was here that I discovered the work of Gaudier Brzeska.

Image above: Portrait. Diptych. Oil on canvas. (1997-98).

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I have illustrated for most of my professional life. Much of my work has been commissioned by scientific publishers, and I have been making illustrations for science journals since 1992.  In 2007 and then once more, in 2013, I designed exhibitions of comic art for the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. These were huge undertakings, involving the eye of the illustrator to compose many hundreds of metres of frescoes, composed of comic book art, in addition to those of the designer, who prepared the images for printing. I have also worked for many years for the Journal of Cell Science, and for Cold Spring Harbour Press. More recently I have begun to write and illustrate my own books for children, and these are now available for purchase as e-books.

Image: one of the Mole Comix series published by the Journal of Cell Science, (2016, approx).
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I have made pictures and drawn all my life. Growing up with the paintings of my Aunt, Elsie Dawson, was amazing. Her fine landscapes and flower paintings touched me deeply. My own journey in art soon transported me back to the second half of 16th century Italy of Tiziano Vecelli and then on toward Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, working into the early 17th.

Image above: Two pages from The Russian Album. Gesso, graphite on printed paper. (2013-14).
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